Competition policy and antitrust legislation are currently enjoying a renaissance in Washington and the technology industry is once again the target of much scrutiny. However, as the Biden administration and Congress debate how best to curb the ability of technology leaders to misuse their market power, they are ignoring the practices of legacy software providers such as Oracle and Microsoft. Despite their reputation for leveraging their dominant position to force unwitting customers into unwelcomed and restrictive licensing agreements, these companies appear to be flying under the radar in the current competition debate.
Through our representations of scores of software licensees, we have seen first-hand the harmful effects of unfair software licensing and audit tactics on both growing and established businesses. And we believe that there are more than sufficient grounds for policymakers to widen the scope of their current investigations to include review of these questionable software licensing practices and how they have negatively impacted business choice and utilization of cloud services. There is a strong case to be made that Oracle and Microsoft’s aggressive use of their software licenses has allowed them to gain a foothold and grow their cloud businesses despite being inauspiciously late entries into that dynamic market.
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