Microsoft and Google’s lobbying war in Brussels is heating up – POLITICO

The Open Cloud Coalition also dismissed the criticism, saying it is “transparent about its members.”

“We are not against any individual company, we are a pro-market coalition focused on defending the principles that will strengthen the cloud market in Europe, mainly openness and interoperability,” Nicky Stewart, Senior Advisor at Open Cloud. The coalition said in an emailed comment.

The struggle continued

The rivalry between Google and Microsoft goes back decades, but recent lobbying battles in Brussels have reignited the feud between the two.

In September, Google filed an antimonopoly complaint The European Commission is demanding an investigation into Microsoft’s licensing contracts, which it says may have unfairly pushed customers into Azure’s cloud business.

That complaint comes on the heels of a deal in another closely-watched standoff: Microsoft’s summer signed an armistice with the cloud association CISPE (backed by rival Amazon) being paid to file a complaint with the European Union’s antitrust authorities.

In her blog post, Alaili provided new details of the behind-the-scenes fight over the CISPE agreement. “In July, when CISPE was on the verge of settling its complaint against Microsoft, Google offered CISPE members a combination of cash and loans worth an impressive $500 million to drop the deal and continue the litigation. They wisely refused,” she wrote.