The US technology giant Microsoft has prevailed for bidding races for a billion contract with the US Department of Defense. As the Pentagon announced, Microsoft should take over the so-called Jedi project to build a cloud system for all branches of the US military. The contract has a volume of ten billion dollars (about nine billion euros) and runs over ten years.
Only the Microsoft and the online retail giant Amazon had recently applied for the Jedi major order ("Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud"). The front runner was actually Amazon. Company boss Jeff Bezos lies for a long time in the dispute with US President Donald Trump. Bezos is also the owner of the Washington Post newspaper, which regularly criticizes the US president.
In a statement, Amazon now commented on the Pentagon's decision to "be surprised by this conclusion." If there had been a "detailed assessment based solely on the comparative offers", the decision would have been different.
Previously, the software group Oracle and the IT service provider IBM were eliminated from the competition, which had previously also signaled their interest in the project.
In October 2018, Google had withdrawn from the bidding race and referred to ethical concerns. Google was not sure if the Jedi project its own principles for dealing with artificial intelligence correspond, said the technology company as a reason.