- Some Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) customers and rivals alleged that Microsoft repeatedly used its leverage over one market to hinder competition in another, Bloomberg reports.
- Microsoft’s practices cut across cloud computing, where it played catch-up, and productivity software, where it dominated.
- The Windows operating system held a 96% share of the personal-computer market in 2021, while the Office suite captured 86% of its market in 2020.
- In 2019, Microsoft revamped the mode of licenses saying certain programs “cannot be deployed with dedicated hosted cloud services offered by the following public cloud providers: Microsoft, Alibaba, Amazon (including VMware Cloud on AWS), and Google.”
- In some cases, the revamped agreements prohibited using some products on competing cloud services.
- Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) Amazon Web Services, and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google complained to Microsoft on behalf of multiple customers.
- Microsoft admitted offering discounts to existing customers who opt to run some of its programs in Azure, compared with the cost of using the same products with Amazon or Google. It admitted restricting using some versions of Office in Google, Amazon, and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s (NYSE:BABA) cloud.
- Microsoft recently promoted how customers can save money by using Azure Hybrid Benefit to move traditional licenses to Azure, listing 50% savings compared with buying those licenses through the standard pay-as-you-go Azure rate.
- Microsoft looked to talk with customers and rivals and was committed to addressing the issues.
- Price Action: MSFT shares traded higher by 0.26% at $286 in the premarket on the last check Tuesday.
