Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has withdrawn its antitrust complaint filed with the European Commission against Microsoft’s cloud practices, a week after Brussels opened three market investigations into AWS and Microsoft Azure under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
From now on, Google says it intends to contribute to the work of authorities within this broader framework, and remains committed to engaging in dialogue with public policymakers to evolve competition rules and licensing terms in the cloud.
Google had filed with the European Commission in 2024 accusing Microsoft of using software licensing terms to trap customers onto its Azure platform. The complaint highlighted penalties, restrictions on the use of Windows Server, and interoperability barriers for companies seeking to run Microsoft software on competing clouds or to migrate workloads away from Azure.
These charges echoed concerns already voiced by the industry association CISPE, backed by Amazon, which had itself filed then withdrawn a complaint following a 2024 settlement.
EU cloud investigations
The investigations opened by the Commission aim to determine whether AWS and Azure should be designated as “gatekeepers” for their cloud services, even though they do not automatically meet all the numerical thresholds laid out in the DMA. Brussels wants to assess whether certain sector characteristics (lock-in effects, exit costs, technical barriers to multicloud) reinforce the market power of these hyperscalers at the expense of competition.
A third investigation will examine whether the current DMA provisions suffice to address practices that could limit contestability and fairness in the cloud, or whether regulatory adjustments are necessary. The Commission said these efforts are part of a broader push to tailor digital competition tools to the specifics of cloud computing within the EU.
