[mickeypi]

FTA:

“Companies interested in the contract included Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle”

and

“The deal was considered "gift-wrapped for Amazon" until Oracle (co-chaired by Safra Catz) contested the contract”.

So pretty much every single large cloud provider went after this, though Google did eventually bow out early. Other than winning the second round of the bidding (and not actually going live), is there something Microsoft did specifically that warrants being singled out?