Google files an EU antitrust complaint alleging Microsoft engages in unfair cloud practices and is “exploiting” its customers' reliance on products like Windows
Search giant seeks antitrust probe of Big Tech rival over dominance of Azure platform
Context & Ripple Effects
This EU filing extends Google’s regulatory campaign against Microsoft’s cloud terms: Google had previously urged the UK CMA to intervene over practices it said discouraged customers from choosing rival clouds, and lodged a US complaint over Office 365 terms it said locked clients into Azure.
The dispute later moved beyond a bilateral complaint when Google withdrew the 2024 filing after an EU probe of Azure and AWS began under the DMA. That sequence makes this filing an early pressure point in the broader scrutiny of hyperscaler cloud switching and licensing.
First-order effects
- Google formally puts its allegations about Windows-linked cloud practices before EU competition authorities, seeking scrutiny of Microsoft’s Azure position.
- Microsoft faces a new regulatory defense over how its product and cloud terms affect enterprise customers’ ability to use competing services; the filing itself does not establish a violation.
Second-order effects
- The complaint gives cloud rivals and large enterprise buyers a regulatory channel to challenge contractual or licensing terms they view as raising switching costs.
- Microsoft’s public response, including its later claim that Google was backing campaigns against it, shows the dispute is likely to become a contest over both cloud-market evidence and regulatory influence. Microsoft later alleged a Google-backed campaign targeting European regulators
Third-order effects
- If enforcement finds that desktop-software dependence can be used to steer cloud demand, cloud competition policy could increasingly assess linked product ecosystems rather than standalone infrastructure pricing.
- The later EU scrutiny of both Azure and AWS suggests that the durable issue is not one company’s complaint, but whether hyperscalers’ commercial terms allow customers to move workloads without material friction.
The trend: Cloud antitrust is shifting toward the leverage created when dominant software ecosystems, licensing terms, and infrastructure purchasing are bundled together.