Google: We're still working to defeat Microsoft's 'anticompetitive' cloud policy Google says Microsoft's confidential settlement with a group of European cloud providers is merely about using its financial muscle to make complaints about software licensing costs vanish. Yesterday, the Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers of Europe (CISPE), a trade group comprised of 27 companies, agreed to remove a …
What a heroic thing for the worst of the big three cloud providers to say.
Remember a few years ago when Discord went offline for a day pretty much once a month? Yeah, almost every single time was Google Cloud's fault. I think there was perhaps maybe one time in my recollection where Discord went down due to their own fault (I think it was a database issue), every other time it was either Google Cloud or Cloudflare. Google is probably the most inept big tech company on earth.
Seems to be increasingly common these days. Google is the pot calling the kettle black.
They are a behemoth and not the poor relation. The chocolate factory is as bad as Redmond who is as bad as AMZN who is as bad as ORCL and ...
All these cloud factories need divesting from their parents 100% divorce. Only then will we get a level playing field when it comes fo competition.
" whinge, moan and complain Seems to be increasingly common these days. "
Well it is, and there's an unfortunate reason behind that. New software, services and business models are thin on the ground, meaning that real, market driven innovation has all but ceased for Big Tech and growth is slowing as markets become saturated. It's also a function of size - the bigger a corporation, the harder it is to grow. When innovation and growth slow, a service either dies because nobody needs it, or if they need it the service becomes a utility. And when you're a utility, all the value is driven by trying to hold customers captive, exploiting your market power, and gaming the regulatory system. If you look all across Big Tech (and indeed big US business in general), they're busy gaming the system, whether it's MS, Google, Facebook, or outside the tech sector, people like Boeing, Tesla, all of the financial services sector, etc. They challenge the remit and powers of regulators, they stretch every legal definition to and beyond breaking point, they ignore rules they don't like because they might not get caught.
They are of course all betting that AI will deliver some magical growth, but that seems driven by hope rather than any obvious value creation.
This sort of payoff-to-make-complaints/lawsuits/regulatory-enforcements-go-away is what governments and businesses around the world do every day.
(First-world) cops shot and killed innocents while said cops executed a raid on a house -- at the wrong address? Families must sue the government, the government will pay them off, and not change its police procedures or training to prevent a recurrance.
(First-world) manufacturer exceeds the amount of pollutants allowed by regulatory agency permit? Company reaches a settlement with the regulating agency, pays said agency money and promises not to do that bad thing in the future (while not admitting that they did it in the past -- which is critical in avoiding citizen-initiated lawsuits). &c.
Which rock have you been living under?
Company breaks the original settlement agreement after killing 346 people, company pleads guilty and pays a relatively small fine.
Still no court case, and no real consequences for the people who made the decisions "the company" now accepts were criminal.
It appears several people have now avoided a trial for involuntary manslaughter (or similar).
Originally we were monkeys working to climb the trees and get lunch and dinner everyday, but complaining that the Lions and Tigers were competing with us.
These days we're just using computers and trying to get work done (occasionally ordering Pizza online) but trying to get everything done these days is working against Google, Microsoft and so many other companies that are all just trying to eat all their customers. I wonder if Aliens have visited our world for millions of year and seeing today's environment have only said, "Oh the Lions and Tigers are still eating all the Monkeys"
I'm not complaining, I just think that we all, as Human Life, need to start behaving much better in future because the current worldwide business environment is causing so many of our life's problems.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is objecting simply because Azure has taken so much of the market share AWS once controlled by Azure offering a better cloud product.
AWS is just playing the regulatory game (given that the EU is much more anti-capitalist than the US) to nip at the heels of Azure to make it more costly for Azure to do business in Europe.
It is not about competition - it is about Google wanting to dominate the cloud industry and keep dominating it.
I’d rather see less regulation and less government preferences in law, and more real competition by all cloud providers having to offer better products and services to gain market share. Government should not be used to affect that very capitalist approach to competition, rather than the corporatist approach we see now.
Innovation that produces value greater than cost comes only from a free market, capitalist approach, not from corporatism.
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