Microsoft (MSFT.O) faced a complaint from a Spanish startup coalition regarding its cloud practices, filed with the Spanish antitrust regulator on Tuesday. This adds to existing grievances over its rapidly expanding cloud computing services, following a similar complaint by a trade group to the EU. The U.S. tech giant ranks second in the cloud computing sector, trailing market leader Amazon (AMZN.O), but is expected to narrow the gap quickly with its generative AI features powered by OpenAI technology, which attract business users.
The Spanish Startup Association, representing over 700 startups in Spain, highlighted several allegedly anti-competitive practices by Microsoft in recent years. These practices, according to the association, exploit Microsoft’s dominant position in Operating Systems (Windows) and traditional productivity software (Microsoft Office, Windows Server, SQL Server) to promote Azure cloud services and impose barriers that hinder fair competition for startups.
The association urged the Spanish competition authority to investigate and implement urgent measures to foster a competitive market environment. Carlos Mateo, president of the Spanish Startup Association, emphasized the importance of equality in competition for all companies to avoid being disadvantaged either as customers or as providers of technology.
Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), which includes Amazon among its members, lodged a complaint with EU antitrust regulators in November regarding Microsoft’s new contract terms imposed on October 1 and other practices. They argued that these actions were detrimental to the European cloud computing ecosystem.
