Updated Microsoft has responded to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation into public cloud services and licensing by insisting its terms "do not meaningfully raise the costs of cloud rivals."
Bring your own license – new Microsoft rules
In its response to the inquiry, which landed alongside several submissions today, the company insisted that Amazon remained the market-leading hyperscaler in the UK, noting that Google was growing quarter-on-quarter. It also said Windows Server fell behind Linux in cloud OS share, and SQL Server remained second behind Oracle.
"Amazon and Google are also both still increasing their Windows Server and SQL Server Virtual Machine (VM) vcore hourly usage by UK customers," Microsoft said.
Google's cloud business is really growing. According to the Q2 2024 financial report [PDF], revenue from Google Cloud grew by just under 29 percent year-over-year to over $10 billion. However, AWS and Microsoft Azure are still the big beasts in the UK cloud market, while Google lags behind. In addition, Microsoft is tapping into Amazon's leadership.
