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Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

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Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#81

Post by Zigurd »

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?

Amazon's cloud products apparently don't have to be at the low end of the price spectrum. And yet they continue to dominate. That's much harder to achieve in retail.

Another difference is that Amazon already has the dominant position in cloud computing. Amazon's share of all retail (not just e-commerce), is not dominant.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#82

Post by fabrice_d »

badloginagain wrote: post #49
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...

The latest trick for wsj articles is to append /amp before /article More readable, less ads, and no-paywall.

And it's even available in the page as a link: " rel="nofollow">http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/amazon-reports-surge-in-prof...

That's a call for a browser extension!

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#83

Post by elwell »

mabbo wrote: post #30
laxatives wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the significance of May 15th?

Employee stock vesting day. If you get stocks granted as a bonus (most of us do), they vest in may and November. I know guys who've never sold any of their stocks. This will be literally $10k or more in their pockets, if they finally decide to sell.

Does that event generally lower share price on the market?

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#85

Post by epa »

ergothus wrote: post #46
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 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"

That's not really how accounting works

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#86

Post by GeechieCloud »

sokoloff wrote: post #62
jonhohle wrote: post #14

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…

Office 365 relies on Azure as well (unclear how much of it, though)

A number of Microsoft's own services -- including Office 365 business, Office 365 consumer, Bing and Xbox Live -- are not running on its Azure cloud backbone. They are still running on their own custom stacks and datacenters.http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-is-on-a-quest-to-move...

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#87

Post by GeechieCloud »

abritishguy wrote: post #24
jonhohle wrote: post #14

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

Certain, newer pieces of some of these services, such as the Azure Active Directory service at the heart of Office 365 and some of the newer, complementary Xbox Live services are hosted on Azure. But the core Bing, Office 365 Commercial and Consumer offerings and Xbox Live services are not hosted on Azure. (same article as above)

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#88

Post by paulddraper »

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...

So....block ad blockers and HN screams.

"I will pay for content", they say. "I just don't like your 25MB flash ads."

Link to crap, and HN screams.

"Is journalism dead? This stuff is just click bait. I appreciate good writing and quality content."

Put up a paywall and HN screams.

"Why u make me pay?!?!?!?"

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#89

Post by ChristianBundy »

paulddraper wrote: post #88
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...

So....block ad blockers and HN screams. "I will pay for content", they say. "I just don't like your 25MB flash ads." Link to crap, and HN screams. "Is journalism dead? This stuff is just click bait. I appreciate good writing and quality content." Put up a paywall and HN screams. "Why u make me pay?!?!?!?"

Solution: don't do shitty things (e.g. block ad-blockers, write awful content, or use paywalls). Easy.
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