Microsoft: So what if it costs 4X as much to run Windows Server in AWS, Alibaba, and Google? For AWS and Google to urge the UK competition regulator to "intervene and constrain the price" that Microsoft charges them to license its software in their clouds is both "extraordinary and unprecedented." Or so says Microsoft in a response to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Britain's anti-trust police which …
It's honestly hard to see this going well for Microsoft. One of the cloud vendors also controls a major operating system that customers need to run particular workloads, and they offer wildly different pricing for running it on their own cloud compared to other clouds. It's pretty much the definition of anti-competitive pricing.
Trying to dress it up comparing to running the same workload on-prem doesn't really cut it.
> One of the cloud vendors also controls a major operating system that customers need to run particular workloads, and they offer wildly different pricing for running it on their own cloud compared to other clouds.
This is one of those times when I feel: how aren't they justified in doing this?
They made the OS. They keep it up, they license it out, they use it, they improve it, they so-on - all without the assistance of anyone outside of Microsoft.
Then they're being told: they can't bundle it, like a cable TV provider bundles channels. They can't optimize it for the systems that they're running it on. They can't do anything with it, unless someone else is doing it, too, in the same way, for the same cost. How does this make sense?
I really feel like all of this "anti-trust" is starting to over-step its bounds. Microsoft isn't undercutting the hardware pricing if you use their OS on their cloud. They're bundling - and giving you the OS/SQL licensing for free/cheap. Like getting HBO for "free" when you pay for Disney. It's not comparable to giving you free DataDog when you use Kubernetes in Azure cloud. Basically: they're not doing something that is unsustainable for them, like when Amazon was selling diapers at below-cost to shut out a competitor. Microsoft can license their own software this way, and keep doing it, and continue doing it, and it's just their business. Why is that a problem? Let Amazon et. al make their own GUI-based OS and *compete*, right? What Microsoft is doing *is* competition, and is actual and valid competition.
Even so, I'm not these market-watchdogs, I'm not the trade groups, and no one is listening to a commentator on The Reg, so I guess we'll see. I don't like MS, I actively avoid using their software, I wish they would just go away, but I do feel that they are *not* acting anti-competitively.
They can optimise Azure as much as they like - what they shouldn't be allowed to do is use their regrettable dominance in one area of business to "compete" in another area... Feel free to discount your cloud prices knowing that some percentage of them will be pulling MS licenses, but those licenses should not be punitive for choosing to use a different computer than the one MS want you to (pay to) use.
"punitive " Interesting choice of language. How about Microsoft must not give their customers a discount for going with Microsoft? Would you allow them the ability to offer a lower price than their competitors, if so, by how much? Possibly Microsoft should be forced to charge their customers more so Google & Amazon can compete.
Then they're being told: they can't bundle it, like a cable TV provider bundles channels. They can't optimize it for the systems that they're running it on. They can't do anything with it, unless someone else is doing it, too, in the same way, for the same cost. How does this make sense?
Because they have a dominant or quasi-monopoly position. Which means that by using that position as leverage, they could threaten users into accepting massively disadvantageous conditions and suppress their competitors. This is about as if the unique internet provider in your area would bundle their service with a bag of dog shit that you don't want, but that you are forced to buy every month if you want internet.
The reading is: Microsoft can't offer a lower price than any other cloud provider. If they do, it's anti-competitive.
?
What can they do?
I can get basically free phone service through my ISP if I "bundle" them, and it's basically the only provider. Or at least, that has been the case where I used to live - there's one cable internet ISP and your other choice was dial-up.
You're misreading it.
Let's use BT / Openreach as a UK example.
BT as it was, owned most of the telecoms infrastructure that the UK depended on.
So we'll call this the Windows part, as people need these to get the job done.
Now anyone can run broadband on top of this.
Let's call this the Azure part, as there is plenty of competition and people can charge what they want for this service.
A customer with BT broadband will pay £30 per month, as BT discounts its underlying phone line part because your using BT broadband
BT charge the competition (the azure bit) £80 per month just to use BT"s phone lines to provide their broadband service to the end customer.
Now see the problem?
You've got it backward.
The infrastricture is the infrastructure -- azure is the telecoms infrastructure. It's literally 1 to 1.
Windows is the "thing on top". You can use it, but you don't need to. Microsoft gives you a "discount" for using their Windows, because you're paying for their infrastructure. Or, hey, you can totally buy your own separate Windows license and use your own computers or others' computers or whatever. Others companies can't provide the same discount because, well, Windows isn't theirs. I mean they can, but they'd be selling at a loss. (In fact *that* would be anti-competitive against other cloud providers, or colo providers, even.) (Google *does* provide Google Docs, though. They don't license that to MS, at all, either.)
See how you're telling a company that they can't price their offerings less than another? Microsoft isn't being *anti-competitive* because they are not selling at a loss to undercut competition. They can maintain this price forever -- they're not doing it to try and wear down competition, at harm to themself, so that they can then raise prices once there's none left (like Amazon did with diapers).
Honestly I think each of us probably just fundamentally disagrees with the other, and there's not going to be a resolution by "explaining it better". The legal fight will have to be fought, and the courts will have to weigh in.
The fact you put that in quotes makes it clear you understand that customers choose to use MS. It isn't a "need", there is nothing forcing them to use MS for this stuff and judging by the amount of node developer jobs around atm there are plenty of people making an alternative choice.
You are letting your hate of MS get in the way of logic. I don't see why 'cos Amazon are a much bigger bunch of cunts that MS have ever been. I don't see MS bigwigs throwing their support behind the rise of facsim like Bezos either....
The argument you put forward is don’t use Windows. In reality, an old, but critical application running on .Net must run on windows. There are millions of these applications out there and trying to make them run on Linux requires investment and time, both of which companies don’t have for these applications.
Your argument is flawed sir.
Basically, Microsoft offering a rebate on Windows to customers who use Azure is similar to them selling Azure at a loss, which as you say would be anti-competitive. If your product has a dominant position in one market, it is not allowed to offer a discount on a bundle of that product with another product in a different market, because that means you are selling the other product at a loss.
I think the practice of regulators wanting dominant vendors to unbundle their products goes back a long way - and in the case of computers to the 1969 antitrust case against IBM.
And although that case was ultimately dismissed (after about 13 grinding years), it did result in the unbundling of software and arguably IBM was never the same force again. I can see why Microsoft might not want to acknowledge that precedent, but there it is none the less.
Much as I dislike Microsoft's business methods and software, isn't this an effect of companies and organisations locking themselves into the Microsoft ecosystem rather than anything Microsoft are to blame for? Companies might not have had a lot of choice of course if they using software that requires Microsoft somewhere in the stack, but ultimately it's their decision and they own the consequences.
Not that I've ever seen 'Microsoft software' as a bullet point on any project risk assessment, but I expect I'm not the only one who regards Microsoft as a potential risk.
No - it's entirely MS decision to charge multiple times as much for the same software on different cloud platforms, to the sole benefit of their own cloud platform.
If MS charged the same licensing on Azure as they charged on other cloud products there would be no case to answer, even if that price was extortionate - it would at least be a level playing field.
Have you heard the one where Googoyle will give you 100k in cloud credit if you're a startup and build on their cloud?
Get you and trap you.. after 100k spend, it's hard to migrate, and you're probably using infrastructure that isn't even available at any other provider.
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Kind of like what Axon did to cop-houses all over: "Hey, free body cams! Come and get 'em! We'll give you a free two-years of storage, too. Nyuk, nyuk." Now it's all I see cops wearing.
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Along similar lines, you're migrating from your server room, windows licenses in tow, to a cloud, and MS says "Hey, want to use the latest version of Windows? No extra charge!" Now you're stuck on Windows, just like Axon. Yuck.
Oh, wait... right, your intent.
You're taking what everyone does and labelling it illegal. It's bad, it's horrible, but it's not *illegal*. All the down-mods here are people who *don't like* what's happening, but the down-modded posts aren't incorrect - just explaining the facts of how and why these things are happening, and why they can't be (successfully) prosecuted for it. Keep in mind, I'm stating the facts, not that I agree with what these people are doing.
How exactly is IP being riding over roughshod?
MS want to drive people to Azure so they can make even more money.
It's not hard to see it for what it is.
The challenge you now have is that the organisations are so large internationally, that they don't really care about any Anti Trust CMA type actions as they can just pay the "Fine" or spend years arguing it in courts.
This is why you can't rely on developers to develop front ends.
Functionally you could say Azure is a copy of AWS but using Azure is a fuck sight easier than navigating your way around AWS. AWS was originally Amazon's infrastructure that they eventually started to license out. Azure was designed to be used by consumers.
Much like git is a fucking shit show because it was designed wihtout any thought of the users, AWS is a confusing mess with loads of similar but different services, all with shit names.
Maybe sort that out instead of bitching about licensing costs?
Is this only an issue in the UK or Europe as opposed to in the US ?
It is irony or hypocrisy that Amazon and Google are complaining about Microsofts practices, when Amazon and Google (and the US administration) are baulking at the UK taxing of their services in the UK.
Fuck the lot of them. They are all bastards.
Back in the Good Old Days the idea that unregulated monopolies should have a stranglehold on the essentials of life was seen as contrary to the interests of society so the idea grew of a regulated monopoly that was given a guaranteed RoI in exchange for managed -- predictable -- pricing. This idea was deemed old-fashioned and inefficient by corporate PR departments who, using the notion of competition and the usual Econ 101 arguments, sold the notion of deregulation, substituting toothless authorities (easily purchasable as well) for regulation and giving them free rein to screw the public for anything they could get out of them.
Communication -- phones -- were a type of utility but data was never regulated and is now showing the result of consolidation and monopoly. Sure, there's a semblance of competition but its an illusion. This is especially annoying for me since readily available PCs and the early Internet held the promise of true competition.
Isn't he who is forcing the Washington Post to publish only opinions about "personal freedom" and "free markets"? Well, in a "fully free, unregulated market" - the way Bezos & C mean - Microsoft is free to charge them as much as they like for its products. Of course Bezos is free to develop his own OS and charge as much as it likes for it.
Or course in a market where anti-trust worked and Lina Khan was still the head of FTC that would not happen - but Amazon and AWS would not be happy either, I guess...
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