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.

Microsoft is unleashing build 26040 of Windows Server and has revealed the official branding for the product: Windows Server 2025.

It also pushed out build 26040 of the Windows Insider Canary Channel version of Windows 11.

Microsoft’s desktop and server operating systems share many internal similarities and a common code base, although the former lacks the latter’s enterprise features. Windows 11 Pro, for example, tops out at 6TB of physical memory, while Windows Server 2022 can go as far as 48TB.

Infamously, it was possible to switch Windows NT from Workstation to Server mode many years ago, demonstrating just how much commonality existed between editions.

Although Server editions of Microsoft’s flagship operating system are quite a bit more differentiated these days, the matching build numbers may cause users to wonder why updated branding for Windows Server has been revealed while Windows 11 continues to retain its 2021 branding.

Doubtless, a team of marketers is feverishly working out how to shoehorn the letters A and I into Windows 12.

wAIndows, anyone?

As well as confirming the Windows Server 2025 branding, Microsoft also introduced some nice-to-haves in build 26040, including Bluetooth improvements and Wi-Fi support enabled by default for Edge scenarios.

More interesting for administrators is the ability to ditch the hardcoded default port for SMB over QUIC. Instead of the default UDP/443 port, a user can now switch to any other available port.

The company introduced flighting to Windows Server Insiders on January 26, 2024, meaning that administrators keen to try out the latest code from Microsoft would be able to perform an in-place OS upgrade – a feature long enjoyed by Insiders testing the company’s desktop operating system – rather than having to perform a clean installation or take a chance that running a setup from Windows Server media would do the job correctly.

Microsoft thanked administrators for taking the time to test the upgrades: “This is a familiar task, and it sure became easier and more reliable over the years. But it’s time-consuming and might be boresome— especially if you do it often.”

The plan is to continue releasing new builds of Windows Server for Insiders once every two weeks or so. Administrators would need to manually check for new builds unless automatic updates are enabled. The Desktop Experience is also required to access the Settings app.

Production versions of Windows Server 2022 and 2019 are not affected – an administrator would still need to download a preview build to get started.

The Canary Channel build of Windows 11 did contain several changes aimed at administrators, as well as improvements around mobile device image handling and enhancements to the Windows setup experience. IT administrators can now configure the Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) to create, enable, or disable the managed local account.

The account name can also be configured and randomized if required. There’s a new PasswordComplexity setting to drop some of the more confusing characters – for example, ‘I’ and ‘1’ – to aid readability and the ability to generate passphrases.

And, finally, Microsoft wasn’t kidding about ditching WordPad. Already removed from clean installs, the application will also be removed on upgrade.

Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Azure edition runs either as an Azure virtual machine or on an Azure Stack HCI cluster. It cannot install to bare hardware, nor can it be installed and run as a Hyper-V virtual machine. Microsoft has not disclosed pricing for this edition.

Windows Server 2022 Azure Edition offers several new features not available on either the Standard or Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2022. Microsoft calls this exclusive combination of features “Automanage for Windows Server.”

SMB over QUIC provides encrypted access to SMB file shares without the need for a VPN. This feature uses the TLS 1.3 protocol, and administrators cannot turn off the encryption in the settings. Microsoft said this feature uses certificates rather than public key infrastructure authentication.

Also unique to the Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Azure edition is hot patching. With this feature, administrators can patch Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Azure virtual machines without the reboot Windows typically requires, which results in downtime.

The Datacenter Azure edition supports an extended network into Azure so virtual machines retain the IP address during a migration from the data center into Microsoft’s cloud.