Google formally accuses monopolist Microsoft of trapping people in its cloud | Hacker News Reader

Google formally accuses monopolist Microsoft of trapping people in its cloud

theregister.com

69 pointsMR4D26 comments

Quoting Peter-Waterman1 from the article comment section:

This article barely touches the surface of Microsoft's licencing restrictions on its customers who don't want to use Azure.

1. Putting up SPLA licencing costs (Cloud providers must use SPLA) more than Enterprise licence costs.

2. Preventing Windows BYOL on other Cloud Providers but allowing it on Azure, making their customers have to purchase new Windows licences if they don't want to run on Azure.

3. Preventing Customers from running Office in other Cloud Providers.

4, Changing PaaS SQL licencing so that their customers cant use Passive licencing on secondary nodes, except in Azure

5. Preventing customers from bringing their SQL licences to PaaS Services, other than in Azure.

6. Stopping customers using Terminal Services, except in Azure

7. Charging customers exorbitant fees for supporting the end-of-life software anywhere except in Azure.

8. Stopping Customers using MSDN developer edition copies of Windows etc in any place except Azure

If these allegations are true, Microsoft is being anti-competitive and should be investigated irregardless who filed the complaint them.

Much of that list is exaggerated or completely false.

For example, Microsoft actually charges their customers double if they bring their SQL Software Assurance licenses to Azure!

If you read the fine print, you'll discover that SQL Server licensing is either per physical core -- if you license an entire server -- or per virtual CPU if you license a single virtual machine. That is, in typical configurations, they charge per hyperthread on VMs and per core on physical servers!

Most of my customers have 2-4 physical VMware server blades licensed per core, and then they can put as many SQL virtual machines on top as will fit into memory.

Meanwhile SQL Server licensing costs are higher on Azure virtual machines compared to on-prem physical boxes for a given amount of computer power being licensed because you can only license them per hyperthread, and then there's no hardware sharing either. On-prem you can "oversubscribe" and run 128 vCPUs of SQL VMs on a 16-core / 32-thread server and only pay for 16 SQL licenses. In Azure, you have to pay for 128 vCPUs!

Despite all of the above, Microsoft claims that "customers can save up to 80% by using Azure Hybrid Use Benefit"! It's just not true. I've run the numbers with various reseller discounts, enterprise agreements, etc... and it always turns out Azure-hosted SQL ends up being more expensive than on-prem.

Okay, okay, the above is not entirely true: there is also the option of licensing an entire physical server in Azure via "Dedicated Hosts" on a per-core basis. Then (and only then!) you get the original on-prem licensing model. You still can't oversubscribe however, so you're still very unlikely to achieve the same level of consolidation and cost efficiencies as on-prem.

Another issue with dedicated hosts is that the smallest dedicated 'v5' machines now have 60 cores, which is pretty huge, and getting bigger all the time. Utilising AMD's EPYC 9004 series will probably mean licensing 192 to 256 cores, minimum, Enterprise Edition only. Oof.

Similarly, if you compare PaaS offerings like Amazon RDS for SQL vs Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Managed Instance, you'll find that AWS is cheaper for a given amount of performance. Azure SQL MI especially is ridiculously expensive for what it provides.

If I didn't have to keep working with these people, I would report them to our government's customer protections agency. What Microsoft is doing is very deceptive to the point of being illegal false advertising.

Just assume they get their customers from businesses already locked into the Microsoft ecosystem.

I'm not IT at my consultancy but it's clear they eat this stuff up.

I'm pretty sure that Google's garbage customer service and not Microsoft's licensing restrictions are why people don't want to use Google cloud services.

It's ironic that Google accuses Microsoft of essentially being stable enough while basically shutting their own registrar services because they think it's not a "cloud" product.

Rooting for Google on this one. MS has nice products but their entire strategy is vendor lock in. For me, from an infosec perspective that means it is much harder to protect inevitable non-ms stuff and it also means I have to spend too much time fighting MS fanboys (and any $product fanboys) telling them going all in on one vendor will have smooth integration and support but the result is always poor quality products and being told by MS what you need and how you should do stuff instead of you, the customer, telling the vendor you pay what you need and have them do it.

Google people overengineer everything but MS just loves adding all sorts of layers of abstraction and complexity too. If Google is like Haskell, MS is C++.

I hate how if you use O365 you basically have to use Azure.

Pot calls kettle black. News at 11.

Takes one to know one I guess

Funny... I was never operating under the impression that I wasn't hopelessly locked into Azure and Microsoft.

I can see how google would like to frame it as entrapment, but some of us really like it in here. I feel a lot safer "trapped" inside of this Azure/.NET/GitHub/Windows/et.al. prison than on the outside.

The fact that Microsoft is getting called out for this makes me feel more confident in our technology choices. Google's leadership should feel intense shame for leveling these accusations while dropping registrar services. You can't throw the game and then complain your competition is beating your ass.

Didn't know google fancied itself the pot

Isn't that headline loaded? I'm not disputing or accepting that Microsoft is monopolistic, but it looks like the Guardian is sniping from the side at a business contest between Microsoft and Google.

Sarcasm and hyperbole are standard fare for El Reg. It's like if Linux was a British tabloid.

Neighborhood bully Guss accuses Mikey of lunch money extortion.

I'm amazed the domain next to the submission title isn't (theonion.com).

That's rich, coming from the company that kept throwing wrenches into microsoft's machinery until use chromium for Edge.

Microsoft for sure trapped the whole Europe, is that the case in North America? I think both AWS and Google are doing something similar

They also trapped LATAM too. They have such a hold that universities teach .Net stack above anything else since industries use .Net exclusively.

Well, my options are: 1. Microsoft 2. Amazon (no thank you to shitty ux, dark patterns and terrible privacy and non compliance with GDPR) 3. Google, but they always suddenly cancel products and have zero customer support.

It was a rather easy choice.

Microsoft regularly has cross-tenant security exploits (the worst security exploit imaginable, indicating sloppy engineering).

So really you're weighing up security disaster versus terrible UX.

I'd rather protect users.

Azure has some really horrible design patterns from a security perspective

If a user creates a resource they have the ability to delete it later, regardless of their permissions. An IT Admin creates a Network/VM/Storage/Whatever and later changes role and has no access to Azure. They can STILL delete that object whenever they want.

MSFT Bug Bounty declared it working as expected and by design. Owner can delete anything they own, regardless of permissions and access.

> shitty ux

Interesting that you say that about AWS when I would pin exactly the same complaints on Azure.

Last time I tried it their console designers clearly had a fetish for "blades" and horizontal scrolling, both of which can get in the bin.

I was initially frustrated by the steps required to set up a VM in AWS, but that's because they always used secure defaults - meanwhile Microsoft just went for the "firewalls are for pussies" approach.

When you graduate to automated deployments, AWS has multiple options to suit different tastes (Cfn or CDK), while Azure had ARM templates which are convoluted enough to make me stick to click-ops.

One day Google could sell or just quit their cloud like so many other businesses. Microsoft likely not. QED.

https://xkcd.com/1118/

Microsoft trapped us by offering better services, prices, support, and integration.

Prices and and integration is the complaint, it's anti-comprtitive.

Like so: https://t.ly/HgXl

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