Amazon, Google say Microsoft's cloud licensing changes are still anti-competitive

On Monday, Microsoft announced changes to its cloud licensing policies that change the way how cloud service providers sign contracts with big tech firms that offer cloud hardware and software platforms. These changes will come into effect from October 1, and is a result of the antitrust lawsuits that the company faced from small cloud service providers in the European Union. Now, a day after announcing the changes, fellow big tech firms, Amazon and Google, have voiced criticisms of Microsoft’s policy changes. 

According to a Reuters report from Tuesday, August 30, a spokesperson for Amazon Web Services, the biggest cloud services provider in the world by market share, said that Microsoft's new changes continue with “harmful practices by implementing even more restrictions in an unfair attempt to limit the competition it faces.” 

Marcus Jadotte, Google Cloud’s vice-president of government affairs and policy, also told Reuters that the updated policy still fails to meet the promise of “elastic computing without contractual lock-ins”, which cloud services offer. “Customers should be able to move freely across platforms and choose the technology that works best for them, rather than what works best for Microsoft,” Jadotte added. 

Microsoft’s changes came into effect after cloud service providers in EU, who offer enterprise services built on top of Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and other platforms, filed complaints against the operational policies offered by companies with dominant market share in the cloud computing space. 

Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, announced in May this year that the company will be enforcing changes in their policies that would allow smaller companies a more relaxed licensing regime — instead of roping them in with tight contractual clauses. 

However, Microsoft's policy changes that were announced earlier this week notably excuse its main competitors worldwide in the cloud services space, which include AWS and Google, as well as China’s Alibaba. 

AWS and Google have also been involved in a host of antitrust lawsuits themselves, where smaller companies have claimed that each of the big tech firms use their dominant market position to force these smaller firms into unfavourable contracts. According to reports, Microsoft has not responded to the criticism behind its changed cloud service policies, at the time of publishing.