Google filed a complaint against Microsoft (MSFT.O) with the European Commission on Wednesday, September 25, 2024. She said that Microsoft was exploiting its dominant Windows Server operating system to prevent competition

Google's main cloud computing rivals are Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. According to Google Cloud Vice President Amit Zavery, Microsoft was charging its customers a 400% markup to continue using Windows Server on competing cloud computing operators. Indeed, the latter indicated that users of competing cloud systems would also get later and more limited security updates. According to Google, Microsoft forced its customers to use the Teams collaboration application even when they preferred alternatives and used the same manual for Azure. Zavery said that “it is time to act.” “The cloud market will become more and more restrictive if nothing is done now,” he said

In addition, Microsoft reached a 20 million euro deal in July to settle an antitrust complaint about its cloud computing licensing practices with CISPE, thus avoiding an EU investigation. But, the deal doesn't include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, and AliCloud. This drew criticism from the first two companies. Microsoft is said to have amicably resolved similar issues raised by European cloud providers

According to the Microsoft spokesperson in a statement, “having failed to convince European companies, we think that Google will not be able to convince the European Commission either”.