[creato]

I agree it’s a moat, but why would azure restrain competition from google? I think it’s just yet another example of an anti-abuse collateral damage, like email anti-spam blocking small unknown servers or Cloudflare blocking unknown IPs.

[sokoloff]

Because Azure customers want Google to be able to index their sites.

Would you host your e-commerce or social media site on a cloud provider that blocked Googlebot?

It's not Microsoft giving Google a handout out of the goodness of their hearts; it's Azure customers demanding that functionality. (Those Azure customers also don't care about a random little search startup and probably don't want to pay any egress fees to serve traffic to it.)

AWS offers the same: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/waf/latest/developerguide/waf-bo...

Oracle as well: https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/WAF/Bot/good_bot_...

Akamai as well: https://www.akamai.com/products/bot-manager

[whatshisface]

Moats are anticompetitive, that's the entire idea behind why founders want them. Who else would a moat keep away, customers? ;)

[kazinator]

Customers are kept in by moats.

[whatshisface]

That's lock-in, moats are things that keep your competitors out. Source: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/economicmoat.asp