Google has called on Britain’s antitrust regulator to take action against Microsoft, claiming its business practices have left rivals at a significant disadvantage, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

Microsoft and Amazon are facing increasing scrutiny around the world over their dominance in the cloud computing industry, with regulators in the UK, EU and US investigating their market power.

The CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) launched an investigation into the UK cloud computing industry in October following a referral from media regulator Ofcom, which exposed the dominance of Amazon and Microsoft in the market.

Ofcom said that in 2022, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure had a combined 70-80% share of the UK public cloud infrastructure services market. Google’s cloud division was their closest competitor, at around 5-10%.

In a letter submitted to the CMA, Google said Microsoft’s licensing practices discourage customers from using competing services, even with Azure as a secondary provider.

Google said in its, “Especially with Microsoft’s licensing restrictions, UK customers are left with no economically reasonable option but to use Azure as their cloud service provider, even if they use competitors.” Love the price, quality, safety, innovations and features.” Letter to CMA.

The company said that such practices directly harmed customers and were the only significant barrier to competition in the UK cloud computing market.

Microsoft updated its licensing rules last year to address such concerns and promote competition, though the changes did not satisfy rivals.

A Microsoft spokesperson said the company has worked with independent cloud providers to address concerns and provide opportunities and that more than 100 worldwide have taken advantage of the changes.

“As the latest independent data shows, competition among cloud hyperscalers remains healthy. Microsoft and Google made equally small gains over AWS in the second quarter of 2023, which remains the global market leader by a significant margin Is,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.

Speaking to Reuters, Google Cloud vice president Amit Zaveri criticized Microsoft’s practices and said his company is committed to a multi-cloud approach, in which customers can move easily between providers depending on their needs.

“A lot of our software and cloud services interoperate and can even run on AWS or Azure, so you’re not restricted,” he said. “If you don’t fix this, eventually you’ll have fewer cloud providers, and then innovation won’t really happen, and investment will start to go down.”

The issue was Microsoft’s decision to update the terms when customers wanted to use their Windows or other software licenses in the cloud, which effectively resulted in a new license if they used Google or AWS instead of Microsoft’s Azure. There were high costs.

Asked why Amazon, which claims a larger cloud market share than Microsoft, did not raise the same anti-competitive risks, Zaveri said AWS consumers were not facing the same restrictions.

“There are some issues in terms of cloud interoperability, but we can fix it. It’s a discussion among providers that is very much understood, and customers are forcing that conversation,” he said.

“Our problem with Microsoft is that there are no technical problems, but you have licensing restrictions that mean we are now prevented from competing.”

Google made six recommendations to the CMA, including forcing Microsoft to improve interoperability for customers using Azure and other cloud services and banning it from withholding security updates from those who switch.

The CMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.