Google has quietly stepped away from its high-profile antitrust complaint against Microsoft’s cloud empire—just as European regulators sharpen their knives for a much larger dissection of the entire cloud market.
The retreat isn’t a surrender. More like a tactical sidestep.
For months, Google had accused Microsoft of stacking the deck by funneling customers into Azure through restrictive licensing terms. But now that the European Commission has opened its own sweeping probe into whether Microsoft’s and Amazon’s cloud dominance deserves stricter rules, Google has decided to let Brussels take the wheel.
In a short, matter-of-fact blog post, Google’s head of government affairs and public policy for its European cloud wing said the complaint was withdrawn because the Commission’s new process will examine the same underlying issues—only with a far bigger spotlight.
Even without Google’s direct push, the stakes remain enormous. Amazon still holds the crown with around 30% of Europe’s cloud market, Microsoft sits comfortably at 20%, and Google follows with roughly 13%. Regulators now want to know whether certain business practices have helped entrench the two leaders in ways that stifle fair competition.
If the investigation finds the market tilted too heavily toward the giants, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services could be branded “gatekeepers” under the Digital Markets Act—an elite club no company really wants to join. Gatekeepers face strict obligations designed to pry open markets, loosen customer lock-ins, and break habits that keep smaller rivals on the sidelines.
The Commission expects to wrap the probes within a year. Until then, the cloud wars will keep simmering—Google stepping back from the front line, but hardly out of the fight.
