Amazon may be involved behind the scenes in antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft. According to Bloomberg, the cloud provider is sponsoring campaigns against its main competitor.

Everything is allowed in love, in war and apparently also in the cloud industry. Bloomberg publishes a report suggesting that Amazon is the silent mastermind behind the recent antitrust allegations against Microsoft Azure. The cloud provider would provide lobby groups with the financial means to go to war in the background.

One of the groups mentioned is CISPE, a European lobby group that represents the interests of regional cloud providers. The group was one of the driving forces behind an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in 2021. That case was dropped because Microsoft reached an out-of-court settlement with plaintiffs, including French company OHV Cloud, much to CISPE’s dismay.

The complaints against Microsoft often revolve around the bundling of 365 services, which allows Microsoft to offer more attractive licenses than the competition. In any case, it is having an effect: Microsoft has already made some concessions under pressure, such as separating Teams from the Office bundle. The European Commission is preparing an antitrust investigation.

No secret

The fact that Amazon has ties to CISPE is by no means secret information. AWS is simply listed as a member on the CISPE website. Amazon would also support CFSL campaigns domestically. Additionally, like Google, Amazon is not averse to publicly criticizing Microsoft’s cloud practices.

AWS therefore makes no secret to The Register about its membership in the aforementioned cloud associations. The company says such collaborations are valuable. “Companies in all major industries have a long history of working with trade associations. For AWS, they provide industry organizations an efficient way to engage with the community, collect feedback, and engage with a variety of stakeholders about the technologies, practices, and policies that impact our customers.”

A spokesman for CFSL emphasizes that the association does not represent the interests of Amazon, but only those of cloud provider customers. “Our mission is to advocate for the adoption of fair principles across the industry to address customer concerns about restrictive software licensing in the cloud. We encourage Microsoft and all legacy software vendors to adopt these principles, which would benefit all of their customers.”