I would agree they probably aren't 'paying' them anything. Discounting is fairly different, and is not that surprising. Microsoft probably doesn't want a loss

I would agree they probably aren't 'paying' them anything. Discounting is fairly different, and is not that surprising. Microsoft probably doesn't want a loss against google and is willing to pay for it, as well as is looking for accounts that are reference-able. Also considering their margins are very high, they still aren't going to lose money on this even if they don't buy anything else. More likely, they'll get it all back on the next true-up on their licensing. Microsoft has managed to turn plain-text and basic html text exchange and who-what-where-when into an absolute technical quagmire. You can take two very simple concepts, give them to large businesses for 15 years, and you get email clients and servers with thousands of features, and a proprietary calendar protocol that doesn't work with anyone else.