Google Clound warns of Microsoft’s monopoly

BRUSSELS (Reuters) — Alphabet’s Google Cloud on Monday ramped up its criticism of Microsoft’s cloud computing practices, saying its rival is seeking a monopoly that would harm the development of emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence.

Microsoft and Amazon have recently attracted scrutiny in Britain, the European Union and the United States over their market power in cloud computing. Google trails a distant third behind the two leaders.

Microsoft’s collaboration with ChatGPT creator OpenAI has also ratcheted up the concerns.

“We worry about Microsoft wanting to flex their decadelong practices where they had a lot of monopoly on the on-premise software before and now they are trying to push that into cloud now,” Google Cloud Vice President Amit Zavery said in an interview.

“So they are creating this whole walled garden, which is completely controlled and owned by Microsoft, and customers who want to do any of this stuff, you have to go to Microsoft only,” he said.

“If Microsoft cloud doesn’t remain open, we will have issues and long-term problems, even in next generation technologies like AI as well, because Microsoft is forcing customers to go to Azure in many ways,” Zavery said, referring to Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.

He urged antitrust regulators to act.

“I think regulators need to provide some kind of guidance as well as maybe regulations which prevent the way Microsoft is building the Azure cloud business, not allow your on-premise monopoly to bring it into the cloud monopoly,” Zavery said.

Microsoft dismissed that argument.

“As the latest independent data shows, competition between cloud hyperscalers remains healthy,” said a Microsoft spokesperson. “In 2023, Microsoft and Google made small gains on AWS, which continues to remain the global market leader by a significant margin.”