Google’s formal withdrawal of its EU antitrust complaint against Microsoft is the most visible sign yet that the cloud competition fight has moved from bilateral legal wrangling to a Brussels‑led, regulatory test of the entire hyperscaler market — a shift triggered by the European Commission’s decision to open three coordinated market investigations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Background / Overview
The immediate sequence is simple and consequential. On 18 November 2025 the European Commission announced three market investigations targeting cloud infrastructure: two company‑level probes into Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to assess whether those services act as “important gateways,” and a horizontal sectoral study to evaluate whether the DMA’s toolkit is fit for cloud markets. Ten days later, on 28 November 2025, Google updated its earlier public complaint and withdrew the standalone antitrust filing it had lodged with EU authorities, saying the Commission’s market investigations created a better vehicle to address the same structural problems it had raised. This is not merely procedural housekeeping. The change of forum — from a traditional Article 102-style antitrust complaint to the DMA’s ex‑ante, sector‑wide inquisitions — expands the range, speed and durability of potential remedies. Instead of a case‑specific decree handed down after a multi‑year probe, the Commission now has tools to require binding behavioural rules, interoperability obligations, and possibly gatekeeper designations that would reshape commercial norms across the cloud sector.
What Google alleged (and what it withdrew)
Core claims in the original complaint
When Google Cloud first made its concerns public, the allegations clustered around a few technical and commercial themes that resonate with enterprise customers:
- Differential licensing and surcharges for running Microsoft software on non‑Azure infrastructure, which Google said made migration economically unattractive.
- Migration friction and egress complexity, including contractual clauses and tooling shortcomings that increase the time and cost of moving production workloads.
- Proprietary control‑plane APIs and managed services that create practical barriers to portability.
- Self‑preferencing in marketplaces and packaging that advantage Azure‑native services over third‑party alternatives.
Google framed these complaints as customer‑facing issues — arguments about choice, portability, and the practical cost of being multi‑cloud. The company also noted that the disputes were not new: trade groups and regional providers had been raising similar concerns for several years, even after some settlements and commercial fixes were negotiated.
Numbers and contested claims
Public discussion has included striking numeric asserts — for example reports that European firms could face large aggregate licensing penalties or that mark‑ups run “up to 400%” in certain contract scenarios. Those figures originate in trade‑group analyses and individual contract examples and remain
allegations until regulators verify them with documentary evidence. Treat dramatic contractual multipliers and headline aggregate sums with caution until the Commission publishes verified findings.
Why Google withdrew: strategy, not capitulation
Google’s withdrawal should be read as
strategic recalibration rather than surrender. The DMA processes opened by Brussels give the Commission:
- The power to impose ex‑ante behavioural obligations on designated gatekeepers.
- A sector‑wide canvas for remedies that can apply across multiple providers and markets.
- Faster, more prescriptive enforcement mechanics compared with traditional antitrust procedures.
By folding its case into a Commission‑led inquiry, Google effectively moves from being a lone complainant to being an
evidentiary participant in a public fact‑finding mission. This has rhetorical benefits — it frames the dispute as a matter of public policy rather than commercial rivalry — and practical ones: the Commission can compel documents and testimony across the market and design remedies that alter incentives for multiple firms at once.
The Commission’s DMA probes: scope, timetable and legal mechanics
What the Commission announced
The Commission’s press release is explicit: it has opened three market investigations under the DMA — two assessing whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be treated as
gatekeepers for cloud computing services, and a third horizontal probe to test the DMA’s applicability and effectiveness for cloud markets. That horizontal study will look at interoperability, access to business user data, tying and bundling, and contractual imbalances. The Commission signalled a roughly 12‑month horizon for the company‑level assessments.
DMA mechanics and the cloud challenge
The DMA was built to regulate digital
gatekeepers — platforms with systemic control over digital ecosystems. Gatekeeper designation normally rests on quantitative thresholds (turnover, market cap, monthly active users), but cloud infrastructure complicates the arithmetic. Cloud business flows through a smaller set of high‑value enterprise contracts rather than billions of consumer user accounts, so the Commission is explicitly testing whether qualitative, market‑structure arguments justify gatekeeper treatment even where numeric thresholds are hard to apply. If the Commission concludes that AWS or Azure perform as important gateways in the cloud stack, designated obligations could include:
- Mandatory API exposure and interoperability requirements.
- Non‑discrimination rules to prevent self‑preferencing of first‑party services.
- Enhanced portability and data access obligations for business users.
- Steep enforcement and periodic penalty regimes for non‑compliance.
Market structure and context
The Commission’s move is anchored in a simple fact: a small group of hyperscalers now control the majority of global cloud infrastructure spending. Independent market trackers show the three largest providers — AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud — together account for roughly 62–63% of enterprise cloud infrastructure spend, with AWS typically near 29–30%, Microsoft around 20% and Google Cloud about 12–13% in Q3 2025. Those shares underpin Brussels’ concern that scale and integration advantages could create systemic lock‑in. This concentration is amplified by the rise of generative AI workloads, which are increasing demand for specialised GPUs, bespoke chips and dense data centre footprints — resources only the largest cloud players can economically deploy at scale. That investment asymmetry intensifies the strategic importance of cloud regulation because the winners in infrastructure will also disproportionately shape the economics of AI platforms and enterprise services.
What could the DMA investigations produce?
Potential remedies and likely outcomes
- Short term (preliminary findings, voluntary remedies)
- The Commission may secure interim commitments or behavioural fixes — for example, binding commitments on contracts, clearer licence portability rules, or published migration tools.
- Medium term (gatekeeper designation or tailored obligations)
- If AWS or Azure are designated as cloud gatekeepers, Brussels can impose a basket of DMA obligations (API exposure, data access, non‑discrimination) that would require engineering and contract redesigns across the cloud stack.
- Long term (delegated acts and sectoral rules)
- The horizontal study could spur DMA tailoring or supplementary delegated acts that create cloud‑specific obligations, such as standardised portability APIs or stronger restrictions on licence surcharges.
What enforcement looks like in practice
Enforcement under the DMA is more prescriptive and faster than standard antitrust work. The Commission can require rapid compliance, order product re‑designs, and impose periodic penalty payments that affect business economics. These powers, if applied to cloud infrastructure, would force hyperscalers to rethink product roadmaps, commercial terms, and partner programmes. That said, translating DMA obligations into technical requirements for complex infrastructure services is legally and operationally challenging and will likely generate protracted technical dialogue and legal appeals.
Risks, trade-offs and unintended consequences
Strengths of the DMA approach
- Systemic reach: DMA remedies can apply market‑wide rather than only to the parties in a single dispute.
- Speed and clarity: Ex‑ante obligations can deliver clearer rules faster than years of case‑by‑case litigation.
- Customer focus: Obligations can be drafted to improve interoperability and portability directly benefitting enterprise buyers.
Potential downsides and risks
- Regulatory overreach and technical mismatch: The DMA was designed for consumer platforms. Applying it to cloud infrastructure risks overly rigid rules that don’t map cleanly to highly technical, multi‑layered infrastructure services, potentially stifling engineering innovation or creating perverse incentives.
- Innovation and cost effects: Mandatory interoperability or API exposure could increase compliance costs, dilute proprietary differentiation, or slow new feature rollout — translating directly into higher prices or reduced product innovation if not carefully calibrated.
- Litigation complexity: Even a definitive gatekeeper designation would be legally contested. Expect appeals, lengthy technical hearings, and phased compliance timetables that prolong uncertainty.
- Fragmentation risk: If Brussels designs cloud rules that diverge sharply from other jurisdictions, global providers could face conflicting obligations across markets, complicating international operations.
Unverifiable or contested claims
Several dramatic numerical claims circulating in media coverage trace back to selective contract examples or trade‑group reports. For instance, public commentary has implied very large aggregate costs for enterprises when running Microsoft workloads off Azure; those headline figures should be treated as
contested until validated by documentary evidence or Commission findings. Where those claims are decisive to an argument, label them as provisional.
What this means for the major players
Microsoft / Azure
- Regulatory attention will force Microsoft to deepen engagement with Brussels and to prepare engineering and commercial fixes if the Commission seeks behavioural remedies.
- Microsoft’s counter‑argument — that the cloud market is competitive and that settlements with some industry groups addressed many concerns — will be tested by sector‑wide evidence gathering. Expect defensive litigation posture and conciliatory commercial offers aimed at minimising formal designations.
Amazon / AWS
- AWS faces symmetrical scrutiny. The Commission’s probes could force AWS to disclose marketplace mechanics and contractual terms that influence partner visibility and customer choice.
- AWS will likely emphasise competition on price, breadth of services, and customer choice, while resisting prescriptive interoperability that might erode feature differentiation.
Google Cloud
- By withdrawing its standalone complaint, Google repositioned itself: no longer the headline litigant, it becomes a high‑profile contributor to Brussels’ fact‑finding, with the potential to shape sector‑wide remedies.
- Google’s policy posture now blends evidence submission with public advocacy for portability and openness — a strategy designed to win regulatory design wins rather than a single commercial victory.
European cloud providers and systems integrators
- Smaller European providers hope regulatory action will rebalance bargaining power and lower technical and contractual barriers to entry.
- However, if DMA remedies inadvertently raise compliance costs or standardise features in ways that favour scale, regional players could still struggle to compete if the rules drive consolidation in other directions.
Practical advice for enterprise IT leaders and procurement teams
For organizations that consume cloud services, the Commission’s probes and their likely follow‑on effects should trigger immediate, practical actions:
- Inventory and quantify licence exposure. Map where Microsoft licences (Windows Server, SQL Server, etc. are deployed and estimate the commercial impact of migration or hybrid runs.
- Negotiate portability clauses today. Strengthen contract language around migration assistance, export tooling, and transparent egress pricing.
- Benchmark multi‑cloud scenarios. Run economic models that include worst‑case licence surcharges and operational migration costs; validate assumptions with procurement and legal counsel.
- Prepare for change management. If the Commission requires API exposure or new portability tools, be ready to test and adopt vendor changes quickly.
- Engage with vendors on compliance roadmaps. Ask major providers how they would implement potential DMA obligations and how those changes affect SLAs, security, and support.
These steps are pragmatic insurance against regulatory churn: they don’t require choosing winners, but they do reduce negotiating downside and technical risk if the market’s contract grammar changes.
Likely timeline and what to watch next
- Short term (under ~3 months): Intensive information collection. The Commission will issue information requests and gather documentary evidence from hyperscalers, customers, hosters and trade bodies.
- Medium term (3–12 months): Preliminary findings for company‑level probes and potential commitments. The Commission indicated an approximate one‑year timetable for the company‑level inquiries.
- Long term (12+ months): Possible designation decisions, delegated acts, or sectoral proposals that could translate into concrete engineering and contractual changes.
Key signals to watch:
- Whether the Commission proposes gatekeeper designation for AWS or Azure.
- Any interim commitments offered by Microsoft or AWS to limit the need for formal remedies.
- Technical design proposals (standardised portability APIs, required documentation, or egress pricing rules) and the industry’s reaction to them.
Final appraisal — strengths and risks of the regulatory pivot
The Commission’s move to place cloud infrastructure under DMA‑style scrutiny is bold and fits a credible policy logic: cloud is now strategic infrastructure for AI and digital services, and consolidated market power in infrastructure can shape competition, resilience and sovereign capability. The
strength of this approach lies in its potential to deliver systemic, enforceable rules that restore bargaining leverage to enterprise customers and smaller cloud providers. Yet applying a law crafted for consumer platform gatekeepers to highly technical infrastructure is not frictionless. The
risk is twofold: first, that rules will be mis‑specified and impose heavy compliance or innovation costs; second, that protracted legal disputes will leave customers with years of regulatory uncertainty. The Commission faces a difficult technical task: design obligations that preserve engineering ecosystems and security postures while meaningfully lowering lock‑in and self‑preferencing.
Google’s decision to withdraw its complaint shows a pragmatic recognition of this shift: the company wants the Commission’s muscle applied at scale rather than a single case‑specific fix. Whether that gamble pays off depends on how brazenly Brussels uses the DMA’s tools and how carefully the resulting obligations are translated into the technical and commercial realities of cloud infrastructure.
The cloud market has entered a regulatory chapter that will matter as much for enterprise architecture as it does for corporate strategy. The Commission’s probes are a test of whether Europe can design fit‑for‑purpose rules that preserve competition without strangling the engineering creativity that powers the very services regulators want to keep competitive. The coming 12–18 months will determine whether the DMA can be adapted to the cloud or whether traditional competition law and industry negotiation will remain the more practical path to portability and choice.
Source: Computing UK
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/20...ogle-withdraws-antitrust-complaint-microsoft/