Google Offered Millions To Ally Itself With Trade Body Fighting Microsoft (theregister.com) 14
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google Cloud dangled hundreds of million of euros worth of financial incentives to ally itself with an association of European cloud providers that had lodged a complaint against Microsoft, according to confidential documents seen by The Register.
Amit Zavery, the former Vice President of Google Cloud Platform, presented to a selection of members of the Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) trade body, then to the board and finally to the entire organization, according to sources that asked to remain anonymous.
In the presentation, seen by us, Zavery offered to provide a Members Innovation Fund of $4.2 million, which Google described as $105,000 per member to be used as "immediate funding for projects and license fees of CISPE members to support innovation in open cloud ecosystems." CISPE actually has 36 members now, including Oxya, Leaseweb, UpCloud and AWS -- the latter being the only non-European participant. The number has grown from 27 in July. Google also offered to contribute an additional $10.6 million to the trade association, described in the presentation as "participating and membership resources."
Amit Zavery, the former Vice President of Google Cloud Platform, presented to a selection of members of the Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) trade body, then to the board and finally to the entire organization, according to sources that asked to remain anonymous.
In the presentation, seen by us, Zavery offered to provide a Members Innovation Fund of $4.2 million, which Google described as $105,000 per member to be used as "immediate funding for projects and license fees of CISPE members to support innovation in open cloud ecosystems." CISPE actually has 36 members now, including Oxya, Leaseweb, UpCloud and AWS -- the latter being the only non-European participant. The number has grown from 27 in July. Google also offered to contribute an additional $10.6 million to the trade association, described in the presentation as "participating and membership resources."
Tariffs (Score:1)
The US empire is crumbling and now the tech titans are whoring themselves to the EU to demonstrate which is the least evil.
Slap a retaliatory tariff on these Cnuts.
If only there were a major European cloud provider, businesses could ween themselves off Google, AWS and Azure.
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Just protecting your existing license base (Score:3)
The current state is cloud vendors 'protecting their existing license base' by trade complaints, lawsuits, etc. since there's not much technology advancement outside of the AI promise for large corporations.
Amazon is there already? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why complain about Google when fucking AWS is in the group?
Corruption (Score:5, Insightful)
That is what it looks like. It destroys societies.
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While true, it is important to recognize that capitalism does not supply the tools to get this problem under control and universally succumbs to it (like other forms of society that allow accumulation of power and/or wealth and fake communism certainly qualifies) if the problem remains unchecked. Hence unfettered capitalism cannot work. That this also applies to other forms of society does not make this any less true.
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If Google and Microsoft could spend as much of their money as possible fighting one another, that would be great. At least a percentage of it will get spent in sandwich shops by legal aides.
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If they destroy each other, that would be even better. Both are essentially a cancer on society these days.
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If they destroy each other, that would be even better. Both are essentially a cancer on society these days.
A cancer that a vast majority of us willingly and vociferously feed on daily. Yum yum, cancer.
Allied with whom? (Score:2)
Free market fundamentalism doesn't work (Score:2)
This is why free market fundamentalism (the belief that a free market unregulated by government always generates socially optimal outcomes) doesn't work: companies don't only compete in the marketplace but in advertising and law. The response might be, "if only there were no law applying to business, it would lead to socially optimal outcomes" - well, then mafias could thrive (for example), and businesses (collections of people) would be free to be lawless.
So - laws must apply to business. And business will
Developers.... (Score:2)
Why would I use an alternative cloud which is more difficult to use?