Microsoft has agreed to pay 20 million euros to settle an antitrust complaint related to its cloud licensing practices in the European Union. This agreement follows over a year of negotiations with the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), a European trade group representing smaller cloud service providers.
It appears that Microsoft aims to address potential issues with the European Union through this settlement. Recently, technology companies have faced extensive criticism from the European Union. It remains to be seen if this agreement will resolve concerns in the cloud sector.
The conflict with CISPE is settled with a payment of 20 million euros
In 2022, a group called CISPE told the European Commission that Microsoft was unfair. They said Microsoft was making it hard for people using their Azure cloud to switch to other services. CISPE thought this was bad for smaller companies and didn’t allow fair competition.
Recently, Microsoft made a deal with CISPE to fix these problems. Brad Smith, a big Microsoft boss, said he’s happy they’ve sorted things out. He thinks this deal will help make the cloud market in Europe and other places more competitive.
Microsoft’s main rivals, Amazon and Google, have also made some changes. They’ve decided to eliminate fees that made it expensive for companies to move their stuff from one cloud service to another. Google has been loud about this, saying Microsoft is throwing money at the problem instead of fixing it.
We don’t know all the details of Microsoft’s deal, but Google thinks it’s Microsoft paying to make the problem disappear. The deal helps CISPE and some European cloud companies, but not everyone. Also, if a company takes the deal, it has to promise not to sue Microsoft anywhere in the world.
This whole situation is a big deal for cloud computing in Europe. It might make things better for customers by giving them more choices. However, some people, like Google, think there’s still more work to ensure everyone can compete fairly.
In simple terms, it’s like Microsoft was accused of not playing nice in the cloud playground, and now they’re trying to make up for it. But not everyone is sure if they’re sorry or just trying to avoid getting in trouble.
