On Wednesday, Google filed an antitrust lawsuit with the European Commission, accusing Microsoft of anti-competitive behavior and locking customers onto its cloud platform Azure.

Google claims that Microsoft locks customers into Azure through Windows Server. Microsoft imposes financial penalties on businesses that want to use other cloud providers, and customers who want to move their workloads to these competitors pay up to five times as much. In recent years, Microsoft has introduced other barriers, such as limiting security patches and setting up other interoperability hurdles.

Google noted that a study conducted by cloud services organization CISPE in 2023 found that European businesses and public sector organizations are paying up to €1 billion a year in licensing penalties for Microsoft.

Google said that Microsoft has dramatically increased its cloud market share through the anti-competitive practices described above, and that these have largely come at the expense of European providers. Google also cited Microsoft's global “blue screen incident” two months ago as an example of how cyberattacks can become more frequent if there is a lack of diversity among providers.

Google revealed that the company has tried to engage directly with Microsoft, and has also spoken out on behalf of European customers and partners who fear retaliation from Microsoft, but to no avail. “Unfortunately, instead of changing its approach, Microsoft has struck one-off deals with a handful of companies.” Google decided, therefore, to file a formal complaint with the European Commission.

Amit Zavery, head of Google Cloud, said in an interview, “We hope that the European Commission will act quickly and open an investigation to get Microsoft to lift its restrictions so that customers can easily make their choices.” Zavery believes that only then can the European market flourish and providers can truly compete for business and innovate.

In response, a spokesman for the European Commission said it had received the complaint and would assess it “in accordance with standard procedures”.

This is not the first time that Microsoft has come under the scrutiny of the EU's antitrust enforcement agency for allegedly engaging in unfair practices in the cloud computing market.2022 CISPE filed a lawsuit with the European Commission over Microsoft's contract terms. The case was dropped last July after a €22 million deal was reached with CISPE.

A Microsoft spokesperson said that Microsoft had amicably addressed similar concerns raised by other European cloud providers, despite Google's desire for them to continue with the lawsuit, adding, “Google failed to persuade the European companies, and we expect that Google will similarly fail to persuade the European Commission.”

In addition to that case, Microsoft is also facing an antitrust investigation launched by the European Commission on July 27 of last year against its office collaboration product Teams. If the investigation ultimately clarifies Microsoft's monopoly status, the company could face fines of up to 10 percent of its annual revenue.