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Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

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41–50 of 195 posts

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#41

Amazon's rationale for its lack of profits is well known... Why does this rationale not apply to its cloud business? Is the cloud business so good that it generates profits regardless of the investment it makes... or is the retail business so bad that it can't generate profits regardless of the investment AMZN makes in it?

Considering Amazon is able to constantly expand into new retail fields (like groceries), launch a cloud services business, launch own its internal logistics business (that is the 2nd largest provider in the UK now) says to me the Retail business is probably more profitable than the media would have us believe...

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#43
post #10

Is there any reason why Amazon would suddenly "waste" money on profit? Could this be an indication of a change in strategy or is this just a temporary thing?

There should eventually be some time when Amazon does finally cash out, presumably on some timeline as a function of Bezos's mortality. Its unrealistic to be around forever. How many companies last hundreds of years? How many tech companies last decades?

> How many tech companies last decades?

Amazon is at 2 decades and going strong. Any reason to think they won't last a long time?

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#44
post #26
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same...But good to know that it is executing well. Go google cloud go! Bring AWS price down!! We need competition!!

Google indeed seems the strongest competitor now for AWS, but there are far more providers who compete - see a comparison: https://www.cloudorado.com/ . We just need to choose them to avoid monopoly or at least oligopoly.

Google stronger than Azure?

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#45
post #42

Why do people link to basic stories like this behind a paywall? If WSJ has an original piece out, fine, but this could've come from any one of a thousand sources. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/amazon-sal...

WSJ subscribers probably don't even think about the paywall when they share it here, since they are already logged in. But that is what the "web" link is for. If you see a known paywall site, always just click on the web link.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#46

Amazon's rationale for its lack of profits is well known... Why does this rationale not apply to its cloud business? Is the cloud business so good that it generates profits regardless of the investment it makes... or is the retail business so bad that it can't generate profits regardless of the investment AMZN makes in it?

The impression I've gotten from friends working there is the reverse: The cloud business is making so much money it can't spend it fast enough. The retail side, meanwhile, is making money but spending it faster enough to remain "not profitable"

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#47
post #42

Why do people link to basic stories like this behind a paywall? If WSJ has an original piece out, fine, but this could've come from any one of a thousand sources. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/amazon-sal...

WSJ subscribers may not be aware of this, but if you share an article via email, WSJ generates a shortened link to the same article that works for non-subscribers. Try this: http://on.wsj.com/1SNz3dT

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#48
post #42

Why do people link to basic stories like this behind a paywall? If WSJ has an original piece out, fine, but this could've come from any one of a thousand sources. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/amazon-sal...

WSJ subscribers probably don't even think about the paywall when they share it here, since they are already logged in. But that is what the "web" link is for. If you see a known paywall site, always just click on the web link.

You can always google the title and get around the paywall.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#49
post #42

Why do people link to basic stories like this behind a paywall? If WSJ has an original piece out, fine, but this could've come from any one of a thousand sources. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/amazon-sal...

The latest trick for wsj articles is to append /amp before /article

More readable, less ads, and no-paywall.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One significant advantage of AWS is that they have a very large, built-in retail customer with relatively demanding requirements. I've always been under the impression that Microsoft doesn't really have a business that would lend itself to consuming its own services[0] and it's unclear to me whether or not Google uses their stuff internally. 0 - as an anecdote, I recall their salesmen coming to sell my employer their…

Xbox live runs on azure

So does iCloud ;) (and also runs on AWS)

http://9to5mac.com/2016/04/11/apple-icloud-in-house-inspur/

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