The European cloud wars have reached a boiling point, with Microsoft accusing Google of secretly backing a new lobby group to sway EU policymakers and regulators in the cloud market. In a blog post, Microsoft deputy general counsel Rima Alaily claimed that Google is behind the Open Cloud Coalition, a group that includes several smaller European cloud providers.

Alaily alleged that Google has gone to great lengths to conceal its involvement, funding, and control of the coalition, which is set to launch on Tuesday. The group is led by Nicky Stewart, public sector director of UK cloud hosting company Civo, and includes 10 members, including Google, Civo, and several other European cloud providers.

The coalition's mission is to advocate for principles that will strengthen the cloud services marketplace in Europe, particularly openness and interoperability. However, Microsoft sees this as a thinly veiled attempt by Google to distract from its own regulatory scrutiny and tilt the playing field in its favor.

The backdrop to this drama is a 2019 licensing change by Microsoft that made it more expensive to run Microsoft software on rival cloud services. This led to an antitrust complaint by the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), which Microsoft settled in July. However, the settlement excluded major cloud hyperscalers like AWS, Alibaba, and Google, which subsequently filed its own antitrust complaint against Microsoft.

The launch of the Open Cloud Coalition comes as a new European Commission is set to take office by year's end, and the UK is investigating cloud vendor lock-in practices, with AWS and Microsoft under scrutiny. The stakes are high, and the tech community will be watching closely to see how this cloud war plays out.