Google LLC has announced that it has filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft Corp. with the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm.

The move has to do with Windows Server. According to Google, a set of licensing terms that Microsoft applied to the operating system in 2019 harmed competition and raised costs for customers.

Windows Server is a version of Windows optimized for use in data centers. It includes system management and security features not included in the consumer version of the operating system. There are also capabilities geared toward cloud environments, such as a hotpatching tool that can install Windows updates in Azure instances without rebooting them.

Google’s antitrust complaint focuses on a licensing change that Microsoft rolled out to Windows Server in 2019. Under the revised usage terms, customers must pay additional fees if they wish to move their Windows Server licenses from Azure to rival platforms such as Google Cloud. According to the Alphabet Inc. unit, past statements from Microsoft indicate that those fees can increase the cost of running the operating system on rival clouds by 400% in some cases.

The search giant’s complaint flags other issues as well. According to Google, companies that wish to run Windows Server on third-party cloud platforms have more limited access to security patches than Azure users. The search giant argues that there are also “other interoperability barriers.”

“As cloud computing took off and promised to bring new benefits to European businesses, customers wanted to move their previously purchased licenses to other cloud providers, and in some cases to multiple clouds, to provide additional resiliency and security,” Google Cloud executives Amit Zavery and Tara Brady wrote in a blog post. “Initially, Microsoft allowed them to do this. But as Azure faced more competition, Microsoft introduced new rules that severely limited customer choice.”

Google’s antitrust push comes about two years after CISPE, a trade association that represents two dozen cloud providers in the EU, filed a similar complaint. The consortium accused Microsoft of imposing “self-preferencing pricing and technical and economic lock-in” on customers.

CISPE withdrew its complaint earlier this year after reaching an agreement with Microsoft. As part of the deal, the company agreed to develop a product that will make it easier for cloud providers to deploy its software in their data centers. Additionally, Microsoft will reportedly pay CISPE $22 million to compensate its members for certain licensing costs and cover a number of other expenses.

“Microsoft settled amicably similar concerns raised by European cloud providers, even after Google hoped they would keep litigating,” Microsoft said in a statement. “Having failed to persuade European companies, we expect Google similarly will fail to persuade the European Commission.”

Antitrust complaints sent to the European Commission don’t necessarily lead to regulatory action. If the commission decides to launch an antitrust probe, as it did following Slack’s 2020 antitrust complaint against Microsoft, a decision could take years to finalize. The EU can issue fines over business practices that are found to breach competition law and order them to be changed.

After an initial euphoric rush to the cloud, administrators are questioning the value and promise of the tech giants’ services.

According to a report published by UK cloud outfit Civo, more than a third of organizations surveyed reckoned that their move to the cloud had failed to live up to promises of cost-effectiveness. Over half reported a rise in their cloud bill.

Although the survey, unsurprisingly, paints Civo in a flattering light, some of its figures may make uncomfortable reading for customers sold on the promises from hyperscalers. Like-for-like comparisons for a simple three-node cluster with 200 GB of persistent storage and a 5 TB data transfer showed prices going from $1,278.58 in 2022 to $1,458.68 in 2024 on Microsoft Azure.

For Google, the price went from $1,107.61 to $1,250.35. According to Civo’s figures, the cost at AWS increased from $1,142.46 to $1,234.59.

“The Kubernetes prices were taken from the hyperscalers’ very own pricing calculators,” a Civo spokesperson said.

In the IT world, there is an expectation that bang for buck increases as time goes by, but in this example, prices are rising faster than the rate of inflation, and what customers receive for their money remains unchanged.

John David-Lovelock, VP analyst at Gartner, said CIOs had been conditioned not to expect price increases since the cloud emerged.

“Cost control, based on operating datacenters at massive scale, was part of the early sales pitch and in the intervening 15 years, it had proven out – cloud product costs were stable, and either went down in price or more features were added at the same price”.

“However, the rapid rise in the cost of electricity post-pandemic, coupled with the rising cost of skilled IT staff, put cloud delivery under new cost pressures that had to be passed on, from hyperscalers to platform provider, from platform provider to software provider, and finally from software providers to clients.

“While there are cost pressures behind these increases being felt across the cloud spectrum, opportunistic price increases cannot be ruled out.”

Microsoft and Google decided not to officially comment on the survey’s findings. However, a representative for one of the hyperscalers retorted that the figures seemed cherry-picked and pointed out that, as an example, customers using reserved instances could realize significant savings.

In response to the suggestion that the figures had been “cherry-picked,” a Civo spokesperson said: “The configuration we used – a three-node cluster with 200 GB Persistent Volume and 5 TB data transfer – is one we’ve found to be commonly selected by our diverse customer base. While we understand that no single setup can represent every use case perfectly, we believe this configuration offers a helpful reference point for many potential customers.”

An AWS spokesperson said in a statement: “IT providers often tout their pricing in direct comparison to AWS, which encourages further price competition. AWS has reduced prices 134 times since AWS launched in 2006.

“These price reductions have occurred even as AWS has continuously improved reliability, availability, security, and performance. In addition, AWS offers management tools that make it easier for customers to monitor and optimize their cloud costs.”

Despite such protestations, analysts have long predicted an increase in public cloud prices. In 2022, Canalys warned that prices could jump by a third, and several companies have begun to question the cost of operating services in the cloud compared to running on-premises.

But is a retreat from the cloud likely? David-Lovelock thinks not: “CIOs cannot turn their back on cloud.”

The giddy enthusiasm might have waned in favor of some hard-nosed ROI calculations, and some workloads might jump away from cloud vendors, “but this will not constitute a change in direction – just a ripple in the stream of dollars flowing to the cloud.”

So, are prices increasing? The answer has to be yes. How much of those rises are down to the major vendors opportunistically adding of a few percentage points versus an increase in fixed costs, such as electricity, is pretty much irrelevant. The advice remains the same: the cloud is here to stay although its luster has dulled over time.

Time, then, to wheel out the ROI calculator and ensure there’s been no stealthy vendor lock-in. All clouds and all workloads are, after all, not created equal.

Google offered European cloud firms a $512 million package to stop CISPE from settling its antitrust case against Microsoft, just days before the deal was announced.

According to documents seen by Bloomberg, the package included around $15 million in cash, as well as roughly $495 million worth of software licenses for Google’s cloud products over the next five years.

The deal was intended to lock the group into continuing their legal challenge against Microsoft, but appears the members opted against Google’s lucrative offer in favor of a series of concessions made by Microsoft.

The Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), a non-profit trade association for cloud providers, had originally lodged a complaint with the EU’s antitrust branch accusing Microsoft of anticompetitive software licensing practices.

The case alleged that Microsoft had acted illegally by making it harder for customers to change their cloud providers by tying its business software to its Azure cloud services platform.

Google was not alone in its attempts to try and derail the settlement. AWS is reported to have made around $6.5 million in financial contributions to the proposal.

When asked about its attempt to stymie Microsoft’s settlement, a spokesperson for Google Cloud said:

Google has decided to take on the likes of Citrix and VMware by acquiring an outfit called Cameyo whose tech makes it possible to stream apps into browsers – including on Chromebooks.

The search giant’s announcement of the acquisition opines that “Traditionally, businesses have leveraged virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions to access legacy apps without them being installed on the device”. Google also included a quote from analyst firm Forrester Consulting – taken from research it commissioned – to the effect that VDI’s downside include a requirement for “specialized skill sets, user experience latency, and difficulty in security and management.”

That’s not wrong but omits the fact that the biggest VDI vendors – Citrix and the VMware spinout Omnissa – offer clients that allow streaming of apps. Both companies’ clients are available for Chrome OS, and also allow streaming virtual desktops into browsers.

So Google is not exactly breaking new ground.

Google’s head of product management for ChromeOS, Naveen Viswanatha, wrote that his company has already partnered with Cameyo on a virtual application delivery experience fully integrated with ChromeOS.

“By bringing the Cameyo team’s expertise in-house, we are doubling down on our commitment to delivering a streamlined experience for virtualized applications,” he wrote.

Google has certainly picked a fine moment to get into the virtualized applications business. Citrix recently changed its licenses to require acquisition of product bundles on lengthy subscriptions. Omnissa is yet to reveal how it will operate under its new owner, private equity firm KKR.

Plenty of orgs looking to keep their legacy apps alive therefore have solid reasons to consider an alternative, a situation Google’s sales force and channel won’t ignore.

This deal is also interesting for what it says about Google’s Chromebook business, which has done well with education buyers and consumers but hasn’t made enormous inroads into the enterprise, despite offerings like Chrome Enterprise that add manageability and security to its browser-based platform. Google even offers a paid version of its browser – Chrome Enterprise Premium that for $6/month adds further infosec protection measures.

AI might not be coming for all jobs, but it might be coming for some.

UPS’s largest layoff in its 116-year history was the result of, in part, new technologies, including AI, CEO Carol Tomé said during an earnings call in February. Meanwhile, IBM plans to pause hiring for roles it thinks could soon be automated by AI, CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg last year.

Workers aren’t optimistic about the future. In a recent survey from McKinsey, 25% of business professionals said that they expect their employer to lay off staff as a result of AI adoption. And, well, their pessimism isn’t misplaced. According to one estimate, around 4,000 workers have lost their jobs to AI since May. And in a poll from Beautiful.ai, which makes AI-powered presentation software, nearly half of managers said that they’re hoping to replace workers with AI.

But a cohort of Big Tech vendors and consultancies — called the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium (ITC) — aims to push back against the notion that AI will lead to job losses, citing the need for re-skilling and upskilling within the information and communication technology (ICT) industry specifically.

The ITC is being led by Cisco with support from Google, Microsoft, IBM (conspicuously), Intel, SAP and Accenture. The ITC’s mandate is to explore AI’s impact on jobs while enabling people to find AI-related training programs and connecting businesses to “skilled and job-ready” workers, a spokesperson said in a briefing.

“The ITC’s unique approach will research and evaluate the impact of AI on specific job roles, including skills and tasks, and recommend training for an AI-enabled ICT workforce,” the spokesperson said. “Consortium members and advisers share a common perspective that a greater sense of urgency is required to understand the impact of AI on key job roles within the ICT Industry.”

In the first phase of its work, the ITC will evaluate the impact of AI on 56 ICT job roles and provide training recommendations for the roles affected. These 56 roles, which the ITC hasn’t disclosed yet, were selected for their “strategic significance” in the broader ICT ecosystem and AI’s impact on the tasks required to perform the roles, the spokesperson said, as well as roles that offer “promising entry points” for low-level workers.

“These job roles include 80% of the top 45 ICT job titles garnering the highest volume of job postings for the period February 2023–2024 in the U.S. and five of the largest European countries by ICT workforce numbers (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands),” the spokesperson said. “Collectively, these countries account for a significant segment of the ICT sector, with a combined total of 10 million ICT workers.”

The ITC intends to publish its findings in a report this summer. And, beyond that, it hasn’t quite figured out a roadmap.

“The Consortium will determine its ‘phase 2’ scope in mid-2024,” the spokesperson said. “As we progress towards phase 2, the Consortium may consider extending invitations to other organizations and institutions to join our collaborative efforts in supporting the success of an AI-enabled ICT workforce.”

And therein lies the problem with industry consortiums like this.

If the goal is to allay fears of a mass AI threatening of livelihoods, tech incumbents will need to deliver a lot more than vague promises and reports. IBM has pledged to skill 2 million people in AI by 2030; Intel has said it’ll upskill over 30 million with AI in the same timeframe.

“Consortium members have established forward-thinking goals with skills development and training programs to positively impact over 95 million individuals around the world over the next 10 years,” the spokesperson said.

Yet it’s not clear how many AI roles will be available then.

According to a recent analysis by Lightcast, a labor market analytics firm, the demand for AI roles is decreasing, not increasing. In 2022, AI-related positions made up 2% of all job postings in the U.S. In 2023, that figure dipped to 1.6%.

“Consortium members commit to developing worker pathways particularly in job sectors that will increasingly integrate artificial intelligence technology,” the spokesperson said. “It’s a voluntary and transparent effort across companies to assess the impact and identify paths for upskilling and reskilling of technology roles most likely to be impacted by AI … We intend for this work to produce real, tangible recommendations that will address business and worker needs.”