Google veep calls out Microsoft's cloud software licensing 'tax'

> "Microsoft publicly touts that if you run their software on Azure versus other vendors like AWS and GCP, it's five times cheaper or it's more expensive to run on us, basically because of the tax customers have to pay to Microsoft," Zavery told us.

And how much does it cost to run BigQuery on Google Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure, Mr. Zavery?

I'm mixed on this... in the end, most green software is not targeting Windows in the cloud. There's a lot of lift and shift, and a lot of that is problematic no matter which provider you choose. AWS Windows hosts are more expensive in terms of licensing, and there should be some FTC and EU regulatory investigation into this. I'm not 100% convinced they shouldn't be allowed to give themselves preferential pricing. I mean you can't buy MacOS for non-apple hardware period afaik.

This is an example of anti-trust punishing semi-open systems.

No one has a problem with SaaS that people aren't allowed to install on their own clouds or on-premise at all, but if you do allow that then it's "unfair competition" if you charge higher licensing fees.

Ironically, google itself has this problem with android — the EU fined google four billion because of anti-competive practice related to android but is totally fine with the entirely closed iOS ecosystem.

> The kettle is black

- The Pot

What's a "Google veep"?