Microsoft Customers Decry Cloud Contracts That Sideline Rivals (bloomberg.com) 27
An anonymous reader shares a report: The current tide of antitrust scrutiny and regulations focused on big technology companies has conspicuously omitted one company: Microsoft, the software and cloud-computing behemoth that was the notorious target of a landmark U.S. government lawsuit in the 1990s. Microsoft, the thinking goes, was already humbled by years of intense government oversight, and since it largely caters to other companies, instead of consumers, it doesn't belong in the same category as Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple. But now some Microsoft customers, and some of its fiercest rivals, are making a bold claim: The software giant is again using its sway over one market to thwart competition in another.
Microsoft three years ago overhauled the way it licenses some of its most ubiquitous software programs, including Windows and Office, in ways that increase the cost of running those programs on rival cloud-computing systems like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. In some cases, the revamped agreements outright forbid using some products on competing cloud services. AWS and Google say they have complained to Microsoft on behalf of multiple customers. French cloud provider OVH, along with other unidentified companies, filed a complaint last year with European regulators about the practice, saying it's also being hurt by Microsoft's policies. Major business software customers, some of which are only now starting to see the impact as they renew deals or replace aging programs, are also incensed.
Microsoft three years ago overhauled the way it licenses some of its most ubiquitous software programs, including Windows and Office, in ways that increase the cost of running those programs on rival cloud-computing systems like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. In some cases, the revamped agreements outright forbid using some products on competing cloud services. AWS and Google say they have complained to Microsoft on behalf of multiple customers. French cloud provider OVH, along with other unidentified companies, filed a complaint last year with European regulators about the practice, saying it's also being hurt by Microsoft's policies. Major business software customers, some of which are only now starting to see the impact as they renew deals or replace aging programs, are also incensed.
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Microsoft, the thinking goes, was already humbled by years of intense government oversight
As I recall they were ordered to provide documentation for compatibility and when they failed to do so because "it was hard" the courts gave them extension after extension. I never did hear that they actually complied. Is there anyone who can direct me to evidence of that compliance to the U.S. court ordered documentation?
I'm predicting low-quality comments (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe Slashdot should put a moratorium on these hot button topics?
- Microsoft
- Any Musk companies
- Politics
I realize these are some bread-and-butter topics for Slashdot, but they *never* produce insightful commentary, even if they are nerd-worthy.
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I agree on Politics, that is only going to create a shit storm, and their hasn't been any real political insight for the past 50 years of politics that really brought anything new to the table.
Microsoft, has been out of the Slashdot Radar for a while, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple are now the new boogie men, while Microsoft has been kinda the boring business focus company (Like IBM 20 years ago) who we will them do their own thing.
Musk companies, they are doing interesting stuff, just because we have p
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Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple are now the new boogie men
I don't know about the people at the top of Google and Apple, but Zuckerberg and Bezos don't strike me as being very good dancers.
The word you were looking for is bogeyman.
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The point isn't 'insightful commentary'. It's 'page views'. Like any other monetized website.
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This is a good point, but I would argue that participation (and with it, page views I assume) seems to have been declining for a long time, and my hypothesis is that the decline is largely attributable to the decline in quality of discourse combined with topic selection. The two go hand-in-hand.
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Everything is politics. Especially in an age of contrarianism.
Covid-19? politics.
Climate change? politics.
Science??? Politics!!
War? politics.
Xbox versus Playstation? politics.
Open source software? politics.
Ferret breeding? politics.
Re:I'm predicting low-quality comments (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait -- that was religion.
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Everything is politics. Especially in an age of contrarianism.
I disagree.
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I disagree with your disagreement. But I also disagree with the original statement you disagreed with.
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Geology? Politics
Biology? Politics
When reality threatens your fundamental beliefs and eternal soul, everything becomes a plot against you.
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Azure (Score:1)
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The "no one every got fired for..." style of thinking is designed to eliminate thinking. As in "I didn't hire you to think, I hired you to buy Microsoft products! Now drop and give me ten!"
Microsoft is just the worst. (Score:2)
Lets face it, Nothing changed at Microsoft since the Halloween docs days.
They embraced open source and played nice-guy shrewdly long enough to bamboozle people who were not looking to hard and grab some 'good will' by lying. All while what they were really doing was determining what they could effectively mine from the FOSS ecosystem to enhance their Azure product offering.
Once they got that off the ground it was replace one form of lock out with another. I frankly don't believe for a second Senior manageme
Microsoft is still evil (Score:4, Informative)
Hosted Exchange is annoying as hell - there are many small little things that constantly try to nag you and lock you into their ecosystem and even pull other domains into it. Sometimes, there are at least very very complicated ways to get it to work with non-MS stuff. But often there is not.
And I have no idea how MS is getting away with their incredibly annoying Edge browser "please use me! No? Well, I set it as default anyway!" fuckery. That is EXACTLY how they got convicted of abusing their monopoly status back then.
Canadian Government Too (Score:2)
The Canadian government is in a headlong rush to the cloud, and many people involved (including government workers) emphasize Microsoft Azure in everything they talk about. Of course they will stop and add a caveat, "of course Amazon and IBM have somethings similar." And then they switch back to the MS theme. It doesn't help that in everything that the Canadian government does, so much time is wasted on French language versions of everything, something that MS hit on it seems. They are the only cloud provid
Is this really all that unique? (Score:2)
How many other cloud based software companies allow their software to run on other provider's cloud services?
Can you run Adobe cloud based software on any cloud server you want or can it only be accessed on Adobe's cloud servers?
Can you access Sage accounting cloud systems on non-Sage cloud servers?
Can you access Google's G-Suite without using Google servers?
I'm sure there are somethings that Microsoft could offer to be run on non-Microsoft servers but it isn't like they are the only ones doing what Google
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Well, I guess there could be another aspect, especially since MS changes their licensing every other week - You can install office on a virtual RDS server hosted on anything, but they'll give you a real hard time about the license. Whi
Can European regulators really do something? (Score:1)
There is no "one Microsoft" (Score:2)
Even though their address is literally "One Microsoft Way, Redmond", Microsoft is more like a mixture of different companies with different cultures.
Yes, some of them are very nice. They are open source friendly. And they engage with the community well. However let us not forget not all "mini Microsofts" are the same way. Some are still using heavy handed business tactics. Maybe not as bad as Oracle and what they did to Sun, but take a look at Windows 11, telemetry, and forced features, and see how restrict