As an outsider looking in (from the US), what is the difference between the current Azure Germany vs the new locations they're standing up in Berlin and Frankfurt?
Frankly, I don't understand the point of the last 3 paragraphs of this announcment.
The difference is that the discontinued data center was run independently by a German company (T-Systems IIRC). MS engineered the contracts in such a way that they had no ability to access anything in this data center. That made it exclusive subject to German law. As I see it, the new data centers are run by MS directly and thus an entity that is subject to US laws and their far reaching clauses.
Azure is not office products, do you assume because they are both Microsoft products that it would be feasible or easy to use facilities designed for Azure and also use them for handling Office products?