'Google is investing heavily in a campaign to discredit Microsoft,' Microsoft official points out
Microsoft's deputy counsel and lawyer Rima Aleili published an article on Microsoft's official blog criticizing Google's lobbying activities. According to Aleili, Google is engaging in 'astroturfing' aimed at discrediting Microsoft. In fact, it has been pointed out that Google offered $500 million (about 77 billion yen) to groups that have settled with Microsoft to continue the lawsuit without settling.
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Microsoft and Google are currently engaged in a three-way battle in the cloud computing market, with Amazon also joining the fray. Google in particular has targeted Microsoft, filing an antitrust lawsuit with the EU in September 2024.
There is a backstory to this story. A similar antitrust lawsuit was also being filed between Microsoft and CISPE, an association representing cloud providers. CISPE settled the case in July 2024, but Google was not a member of CISPE and therefore did not agree to the settlement and did not participate in the settlement proposal.
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According to Alli, Google offered CISPE $500 million to fund the case if it chose not to settle and instead continued the lawsuit, but CISPE rejected Google's offer and instead supported the settlement it had drawn up with Microsoft.
After that, Google established an organization called the 'Open Cloud Coalition' in the EU and the UK, and began attacking Microsoft's cloud computing business by pushing smaller cloud providers to the forefront.
'Google created the Astroturf group,' said Aleili, 'and these tactics go beyond astroturfing.' 'Astroturf' is the name of an artificial turf product, and by extension, it refers to an artificial grassroots movement that an organization hides behind.
'Google is facing 24 antitrust investigations around the world,' Alli said.
For example, in India, app developers are charged a 30% commission, which has been criticized as being too high by developers and industry groups, and the government is currently under investigation.
In the United States, Google is being sued by the Department of Justice for 'illegally maintaining a monopoly in the search and search advertising market.' The Department of Justice is also considering splitting up the business and the company, and Google has expressed concern.
Aleil said Google was 'attempting to discredit Microsoft and deflect attention from the intense regulatory scrutiny it faces' and 'to shift the environment in favor of its own cloud services.' He added that it was unfortunate that Google was trying to attack Microsoft at a time when it should be focusing on addressing the doubts cast on its own business.
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