Simone Del Rosario:

A battle between tech heavyweights is boiling over. Microsoft publicly accused Google of setting up “shadow campaigns” to try to discredit the competition.

Microsoft’s Deputy General Counsel Rima Alaily writes, “I’ve taken pains to tell the truth, even when that might make things more complicated for Microsoft … It’s not comfortable or natural for me to pen something critical of someone else, but in this case, I think it’s important because it concerns me when someone attacks us and, I believe, does so dishonestly.”

What led to this public rebuke? Let’s lay out the allegation.

Alaily says Google is behind a fake grassroots lobbying campaign “designed to discredit Microsoft with competition authorities, and policymakers and mislead the public. Google has gone through 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.”

She says when the group launches, Google will present itself as a backseat member, rather than its leader.

According to a flier for the group, “the Open Cloud Coalition is being formed to advocate for a fair, competitive, and open cloud services industry across the UK and EU.”

Ok, so what gives?

Microsoft says they learned the purpose of this group is to attack Microsoft’s cloud computing business overseas.

Google ranks third globally in the cloud market behind Amazon and Microsoft and has made multiple attempts to paint Microsoft as anti-competitive in the space.

A Google Cloud spokesperson told Straight Arrow News: “We’ve been very public about our concerns with Microsoft’s cloud licensing. We and many others believe that Microsoft’s anticompetitive practices lock-in customers and create negative downstream effects that impact cybersecurity, innovation, and choice.”

In September, the search giant filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission, accusing Microsoft of unfair licensing contracts. This comes after Microsoft settled with an industry group over similar concerns. Microsoft says Google tried to derail that settlement before filing this complaint.

Amit Zavery:
“We’ve been speaking to many business and public sector organizations. What we’re seeing is a lot of restrictions Microsoft has created using their dominance in the on-premises software. And not letting customers have a choice of moving that workload to any cloud provider of their choice.”

Simone Del Rosario:

Look, it’s not the first time Microsoft has faced criticism for bundling items and forcing users to adopt their products. The landmark antitrust case against Microsoft in the ’90s basically said Microsoft acted like a monopoly by restricting the ability to remove Internet Explorer and use other programs to surf the web. Microsoft avoided getting broken up on appeal and settled the case in 2001.

Now, Google’s the one in the hottest antitrust seat. It lost an antitrust case over its app store and is currently fighting a case over its advertising business. The Justice Department is weighing whether to ask the federal court to break up Google to settle its monopoly issue.

Microsoft says Google is attacking it to “distract from the intense regulatory scrutiny Google is facing around the world.”