Some business customers say Microsoft's licensing rules make it harder and costlier to run Windows and Office on rival cloud platforms like AWS and Google Cloud
The current tide of antitrust scrutiny and regulations focused on big technology companies has conspicuously omitted one company …
Context & Ripple Effects
This Bloomberg report is the opening move in a regulatory arc that has since run through Europe and the UK: business customers flagging that Windows and Office licensing terms penalize rival clouds like AWS and Google Cloud. Within weeks of these complaints, Microsoft began relaxing its cloud licensing rules in Europe, and by October it planned an amendment to make rival-cloud deployments cheaper under EU antitrust scrutiny.
The complaints also seeded formal action: Google later filed an EU antitrust complaint alleging unfair cloud practices, and the UK's CMA has now found that Microsoft's licensing terms harm competition in the cloud market. What started as customer grumbling became the evidentiary basis for regulators on both sides of the Channel.
First-order effects
- Business customers running Windows and Office on AWS or Google Cloud face higher effective costs than equivalent Azure deployments, tilting workload placement toward Microsoft regardless of technical fit.
Second-order effects
- Rivals are forced into the regulatory arena rather than pure product competition — Google's EU complaint and the CMA's findings show AWS and Google Cloud attacking the licensing terms through antitrust channels instead of matching them commercially.
Third-order effects
- If regulators follow through — the CMA may open probes into Microsoft and Amazon in 2026 — software-licensing terms could become a standard competition-law target for hybrid-cloud vendors, reshaping how incumbents price their software across third-party infrastructure.
The trend: Cloud competition is increasingly adjudicated by regulators rather than markets, with licensing terms for dominant software becoming the lever hyperscalers and authorities fight over.