Nextcloud in the Wall Street Journal: Microsoft and cookies

Nextcloud was covered in a Wall Street Journal article, “Microsoft Goes on Offensive in Europe to Combat Cloud Concerns.” It covers a range of challenges Microsoft is facing, and how it employs its army of lawyers and lobbyist to push back.

As the article explains, Nextcloud CEO and founder Frank Karlitschek was approached by a Microsoft lawyer earlier this year to make a deal.

In the meeting, the Microsoft correspondent offered benefits in the form of collaboration and marketing to Nextcloud. For example, they wanted to promote the Nextcloud logo in Microsoft marketing material – if Nextcloud would consider dropping its anti-trust complaint.

In early 2021, under the leadership of Nextcloud, a group of companies filed an official complaint with the EU Directorate-General for Competition about the behavior of Microsoft. This coalition of European cloud companies advocates for a level playing field in the EU.

Microsoft has had a lot on its plate in Europe amidst rising concerns about the security of its products as well as bundling ts products with Windows and anti-competitive behavior in other areas. This is rather similar to the hot water other big tech companies find themselves in.

“He was basically offering us a cookie. It isn’t about having a logo somewhere or doing a quick deal. We’re not interested in that. We are concerned about the overall antitrust situation.”

Frank, quoted from the WSJ article

As covered also in this article on Techzine (no pay wall), a Microsoft spokesperson was quoted:

“You can’t become allies until you stop being adversaries, and can’t stop being adversaries until we address the concerns that they legitimately have raised.”

Microsoft spokesperson to WSJ

One could question whether offering some collaborative marketing was really meant to address such deep-rooted anti-competitive behavior, or if the goal was simply to let the complaint go away with some marketing dollars.

As just today came out, rather than fix the issue, Microsoft continues its marketing campaign by offering a « sovereign » cloud which in reality is just the very same public cloud, as Techzine points out:

None of the tech is new. Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty revolves around service.

Techzine