A war of words has erupted between Microsoft and Google, with the former accusing the latter of orchestrating “shadow campaigns” in Europe to undermine its status with regulators.
As competition in the cloud sector increases, Microsoft has been unequivocal to express its position in a blog post authored by company lawyer, Rima Alaily.
Among other allegations, Microsoft has accused Google of hiring a firm to do its bidding over regulatory pressures, with the Alphabet-owned company remaining in the background to control its direction and approach.
“This week an astroturf group organized by Google is launching,” said Alaily.
“It is designed to discredit Microsoft with competition authorities, and policymakers and mislead the public. Google has gone through (sic) great lengths to obfuscate its involvement, funding, and control, most notably by recruiting a handful of European cloud providers, to serve as the public face of the new organization.”
This is a significant public salvo from Microsoft and one that is likely to escalate the ongoing disdain between the US tech giants, especially as competition increases in cloud computing infrastructure.
In September, both companies – in addition to market leader Amazon’s AWS – were pointing the finger at each other as the United Kingdom’s market watchdog investigated whether the cloud operators have an unfair advantage in the field.
Formation of the Open Cloud Coalition
Alaily set out in the blog post that Google had engaged the advisory firm DGA Group to form the group known as the Open Cloud Coalition. It was reported one company that decided against participating told Microsoft the collective would receive financial backing from Google for taking a stand against Microsoft’s activity in Europe.
The lawyer also linked to a flyer for the Open Cloud Coalition, in which the overview stated its purpose was “to advocate for a fair, competitive and open cloud services industry across the UK and EU.”
The development comes just weeks after Google filed an antitrust missive with EU officials, claiming Microsoft had issued irregular contracts for its Azure cloud services. This came after the company had settled with an industry group, backed by Europe-based infrastructure providers, which raised similar concerns as those put forward by Google.
Meanwhile, Google is facing a second antitrust trial in the U.S. with the case brought by the Justice Department.
At the time of writing, there has been no public response from the DGA Group, while Google responded in an email to CNBC.
“We’ve been very public about our concerns with Microsoft’s cloud licensing,” said a spokesperson.
“We and many others believe that Microsoft’s anticompetitive practices lock in customers and create negative downstream effects that impact cybersecurity, innovation, and choice.”
Image credit: Via Ideogram