Microsoft stole a $10 billion contract with the Pentagon from Amazon

The US Department of Defense recognized Microsoft as the winner of the competition to create a cloud infrastructure for data storage and signed a contract with it for $10 billion for a period of 10 years. Microsoft's victory came as a surprise to many, since Amazon was considered the favorite in the competition.

According to Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener, the company is discouraged by this decision of the US Department of Defense. "The Amazon Web Services platform is the clear leader in cloud computing; the outcome would be different if it were based on a detailed analysis of the offerings being compared," he told The New York Times .

According to CNN , the Department of Defense entered into a contract with Microsoft because US President Donald Trump opposed Amazon. At the same time, journalists refer to a recent book about former US Secretary of Defense James Mattis, written by his speechwriter Guy Snodgrass. It says that in the summer of 2018, Trump asked Matisse not to allow Amazon to participate in the tender at all, but he refused.

As Vedomosti reminds, the American president has publicly criticized Amazon more than once. So, in March last year, he wrote on Twitter that the Internet giant “either does not pay taxes at all or pays little,” uses the postal service as a “courier” “with huge losses for the country” and is driving other retailers out of business. Trump later blamed Amazon for the US Postal Service's losses from delivering orders to Amazon customers, averaging $1.50 per package. Finally, Trump called The Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon founder and main shareholder Jeff Bezos, false.

In the summer of 2018, Amazon employees wrote a letter to Bezos with a proposal to stop supplying facial recognition software to US law enforcement agencies. The reason for the letter was the tightening of the migration policy of the American authorities.