After DOJ takes on Apple, South Africa will investigate Microsoft over cloud practices
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Key notes
- EU rivals file complaint against Microsoft’s cloud licensing.
- CISPE, including Amazon, claims new terms harm EU’s cloud ecosystem.
- Now, antitrust agency in South Africa is investigating into the matter.
Microsoft is reportedly facing yet another antitrust investigation. An exclusive report by Reuters published this week says that the South African antitrust agency is taking on the Redmond tech giant over its cloud computing licensing practices.Â
An industry group called CISPE, including Amazon and smaller EU cloud providers has finally filed the complaint. Back in 2022, the group stated that Microsoft’s cloud computing license terms from October 1st could do damage to the ecosystem in Europe.
Before the October 2022 agreement, which is a revision from the 2019 term, Microsoft pushed customers even further to switch over to Azure from Amazon’s AWS and Google Cloud because you’d need an additional license to run Office 365 on a third-party cloud provider.
And it’s not the only tech giant facing legal battles over antitrust issues. The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has also filed a lawsuit against Apple over its “locked-down” ecosystem, which, in its argument, threatens to suppress cross-platform experiences in messaging apps, e-wallets, and more.
Back in February this year, CISPE said that it’d opened talks with Microsoft regarding the “unfair software licensing for cloud infrastructure providers” in Europe.
“We are supportive of a fast and effective resolution to these harms but reiterate that it is Microsoft which must end its unfair software licensing practices to deliver this outcome,” CISPE’s secretary general, Francisco Mingorance, said at that time.
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