‘Even for customers who opt to pay the 400% markup, Microsoft refuses to provide critical upgrades and security updates,’ said the complaint.
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Google on Wednesday told the European Union (EU) that Microsoft is illegally using its dominant market position in Windows to force enterprises to use its Azure cloud service or face a 400% price penalty and a denial of upgrades and security patches.
The complaint said that Microsoft is only punishing enterprises if they try to use products from three rival companies: Google, AWS, and Alibaba Cloud. It said the Microsoft efforts “are simply an artificial and arbitrary financial penalty for not using Azure. If these penalties were to monetize Microsoft’s IP [intellectual property], then they would apply to all non-Azure cloud providers and not just Azure’s top competitors.”
Microsoft, in an emailed statement, didn’t address the particulars of Google’s complaint, but did predict that the EU wouldn’t be …