Google, Amazon Ask UK's CMA To Take Action Against Microsoft's Anticompetitive Business Practices

Google has reportedly reached out to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) through a letter, requesting the competition regulator to clamp down on the "anticompetitive" business practices Microsoft adopts in cloud computing.

A new letter posted on CMA's website indicates Amazon has shown its support for the search giant's criticism of Microsoft's business practices in the UK cloud market. Following in the footsteps of Google, Amazon accused Microsoft of having anticompetitive licensing policies.

Amazon pointed out that using many of Microsoft's software products with these other cloud service providers requires a customer to purchase a separate license even if they already own the software.

"This often makes it financially unviable for a customer to choose a provider other than Microsoft," the e-commerce behemoth added. As per a Reuters report, Google believes Microsoft Azure licensing policies restrict users from using other providers to an unreasonable degree.

"With Microsoft's licensing restrictions in particular, UK customers are left with no economically reasonable alternative but to use Azure as their cloud services provider, even if they prefer the prices, quality, security, innovations, and features of rivals," Google argued in a letter sent to the CMA.

Google makes multiple recommendations to the CMA

Reportedly, the American tech company urged the CMA to make 6 big changes. In one of these recommendations, Google asked the CMA to tell Microsoft to improve interoperability between Azure and other cloud options.

Aside from this, the company asked the CMA to ensure that Microsoft couldn't block software security improvements for users who decide to switch to a different provider.

In its finding, Britain's communications watchdog Ofcom revealed that Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure's combined UK cloud computing market share in 2022 was 70 to 80 per cent. Google, on the other hand, has just 5 to 10 per cent market share.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft's cloud business remained profitable despite the weak economy. Back in October, the UK's communications regulator took significant steps to address concerns within the country's £7.5 billion cloud computing market, which was dominated by Microsoft.

The software maker tried to eliminate antitrust concerns in 2022 by updating its cloud policies. However, these changes failed to appease Google, which has a problem with Microsoft restricting some of its software from working with major platforms that rival Azure.

In an interview with The Register earlier this year, Google Cloud Vice President Amit Zavery said: "On premises, they could run it on any hardware, there was no restriction really."

"But now if you want to run it on any other cloud provider, you have to pay a tax and penalty to Microsoft if it's not running on Azure, or in the preferred providers of their choice," the top executive added.

While Amazon has a larger share of the market than Microsoft does, Zavery said Google is not as concerned about AWS since it does not impose the same restrictions on its users.

"The problem we run into with Microsoft is that there's no technical issue, but you have licensing restrictions which means we are now being prevented from competing," Zavery explained.