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Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

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Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#71

Post by guscost »

jessriedel wrote: post #22

> Starbucks To Begin Sinister 'Phase Two' Of Operation > SEATTLE–After a decade of aggressive expansion throughout North America and abroad, Starbucks suddenly and unexpectedly closed its 2,870 worldwide locations Monday to prepare for what company insiders are calling "Phase Two" of the company's long-range plan.... > Though the coffee chain's specific plans are not known, existing Starbucks franchises across the na…

Whoops, promoting your cynical humorous reference while this was trending might have caused a backlash, sorry.

For the record I still want to buy Amazon stock someday.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#73

Post by seizethecheese »

tuna-piano wrote: post #25

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?

This is an interesting question.

The e-commerce business seems to provide a near limitless opportunity for fixed investment towards getting your items to you faster. At what point will Amazon no longer have opportunities to invest in better logistics? 1 hour delivery for everything? There are hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investable opportunities there.

On the AWS side, I struggle to see a comparison. Yes, they need to build more infrastructure to scale the service, but there seems to be a saturation point. Where is the equivalent "last mile"?

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#74

Post by hga »

draw_down wrote: post #67
cosmoharrigan wrote: post #17

It's interesting to note that Amazon third-party seller unit share is at 48% of total units shipped, which is a record high. It has grown by 1% per quarter for the last 4 quarters in a row.

I don't really like how they sell things from third parties on there. If it's sold by someone else and fulfilled by Amazon that's ok, but otherwise the whole point of buying on Amazon is to not have to deal with weirdo possibly-shady little retailers.

Amazon is selling trust there; in my experience, if the seller has a 96% or better rating you'll seldom be disappointed when it arrives, and they'll work hard to give you satisfaction if you aren't.

Much better than eBay in my family's experience.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#75

Post by MichaelGG »

serge2k wrote: post #44
prohor wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Google Cloud is amazing. Azure is terrible. Azure js for companies that, 15 years ago, were spending their budget on Windows. Great for "enterprises" that want to "leverage cloud".

Azure is slow, expensive, poorly designed (network and SSD designs are just bad), and the real slap to the face is that the management UI Is worse than anything from Windows 8.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#76

Post by cle »

massysett wrote: post #58
pavs wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its also true that their online retail store created a new industry. They might not be the first online retail store, but they definitely spearheaded the online retail industry. I think the some of the reason why AWS is more profitable or has been profitable longer because. - Amazon reinvested its revenue on its growth. - AWS was a by product of Amazon retail store infrastructure (at least initially). - AWS c…

"spearheaded the online retail industry" "Online retail" is not an interesting category even if they did spearhead it. Amazon is nothing more than a catalog retailer, something Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward pioneered eons ago. Shipping goods to consumers out of a warehouse by common carrier is not a new industry.

Neither is leasing out compute resources.

The devil's in the details. Scale, convenience, ease of use...

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#77

Post by logn »

nxzero wrote: post #59
Quinner wrote: 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...

This is something HN should just do anyway; that is high rep users flag a source as paywalled, and going forward the submitting user gets an alert with suggested alt links. No idea why HN isn't open source with an open source API to insert data too.

A variation of it is open source. The anti-spam features are guarded secrets.

They take a pretty conservative approach to adding features.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#78

Post by tootie »

tuna-piano wrote: post #25

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 retail and video streaming are really just a massive distributed integration test for their cloud services. We're paying for the privilege of doing their QA for them.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#79

Post by chatmasta »

fgonzag wrote: post #51
prohor wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn't touch any Google product that my business critically depended on with a 10 foot pole. Their non existent customer service, willingness to kill products if it does not meet their user or revenue expectations, among many other things. It's a good strategy for them, but bad for their consumers.

My experience with GCE customer service has been < 10 minute replies.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#80

Post by njitram »

tuna-piano wrote: post #25

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 switching cost for retail is really low; one Google and you know where you can get the same product for a potential lower price. This means that to win in the retail business you have to accept incredible low margins or even periodically a loss. Online retail is almost a 'perfect' market.

While with hosting, it isn't as easy to switch. When you have chosen AWS, of course you can switch to another vendor, but that is not without an investment in time and money. The higher the switching cost, the more you can raise the price above cost without customers (immediately) running away.

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