Microsoft is “undermining fair competition and limiting consumer choice” in the cloud computing services market, one of the three companies, France’s OVHcloud, said in a statement to AFP.
The three companies have filed complaints with the European Commission against Microsoft, accusing the US tech giant of anti-competitive behavior in its cloud services, sources told AFP on Saturday, confirm the media reports.
Microsoft is “undermining fair competition and limiting consumer choice” in the cloud computing services market, one of the three companies, France’s OVHcloud, said in a statement to AFP.
The companies complain that under some provisions of Microsoft’s licensing agreement for Office 365 services, tariffs are higher when the software is not running on Azure cloud infrastructure, which is owned by the group United States delegation.
They also say that the user experience is poorer and there are incompatibilities with some other Microsoft products when not running on Azure.
In a statement to AFP, Microsoft said “European cloud service providers have built successful business models on Microsoft software and services” and have a wide choice of how to use the software. that soft.
“We continuously evaluate how best to support all of our partners and make Microsoft software available to all customers in all environments, including those with cloud service providers. other clouds,” it continued.
The complaint, first reported this week by the Wall Street Journal, was filed last summer with the EU Commission’s competition body.
Microsoft was also the subject of an earlier complaint in 2021 to the European Commission by another group of companies led by Germany’s Nextcloud.
It denounces the “increasingly powerful integration” of Microsoft’s cloud services, which it says has complicated the development of competing services.
Microsoft has been heavily fined by Brussels several times for anti-competitive practices related to the Internet Explorer browser, Windows operating system and software licensing rules.
