
Cloudy with a chance of rain
and a lot of that rain will originate in MS's coffers.
Given their recent example of throwing all sorts of shite onto the wall and hoping, this lawsuit is just another brick in the wall of their downfall.
Microsoft has been sued in the UK to the tune of more than £1 billion over claims Redmond has been overcharging businesses for Windows Server licenses used on competing cloud platforms. The lawsuit, filed today with the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal by competition lawyer Maria Luisa Stasi through the firm Scott+Scott, said …
It's easy for Mickey$oft to argue that they weren't charging other customers more - they were simply offering discounts for customers who were also using M$'s cloud.
It's not as if those customers weren't aware of the prices before clicking on "buy now."
I have every aspect of Microsoft, but on this particular subject I see no case to answer.
Since this lawsuit is filed to a competition tribunal, I suppose it is arguing that Microsoft is engaging in monopolistic behavior — it's fine to offer discounts to your customer, but not if this effectively shuts off the competition by leveraging your dominant market share in a separate business. This is very much like Microsoft was found guilty for offering Internet Explorer for free with Windows, using the fact that almost everybody buys Windows to get a leg-up in the browser competition.
Companies will bundle and discount their offerings, what is to cry here? When a company delivers broad set of services they can optimize their costs and pass on the benefits to the clients. Most tech vendors do play wrong and Msoft is no exception, but this bundling centric discount and higher price for other cloud, appears to be a legitimate business strategy than something which is legally wrong.