Microsoft to repay cloud industry group to end EU antitrust complaint – POLITICO

Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, will meet with the head of the EU antitrust office, Margrethe Vestager. | Pool photo by Thibault Camus via Getty Images

The cloud lobby said the company’s anticompetitive practices led to discriminatory pricing and locked customers into services, effectively preventing them from switching to competing cloud service providers. Microsoft has denied these allegations.

CISPE is currently receiving financial support from Amazon, one of Microsoft’s global cloud computing competitors, as part of an increasingly fierce lobbying battle between the two US tech giants.

Amazon declined to comment.

Although the European Commission asked questions on the matter, it did not decide to open a formal antitrust investigation.

Microsoft tried to address this problem with changes to cloud licensing last year.

In February, CISPE confirmed that it had “entered talks” with Microsoft to resolve the dispute, but stressed that “any remedies and solutions must be sector-wide and available to all cloud customers in Europe.” This would include products from the largest member and market leader in cloud services, Amazon.