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Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

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Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#121

Post by aninhumer »

bpodgursky wrote: post #112
cloudjacker wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and this is why I like state-run media sources. 99% of the time I'm not looking for things the ministry of foreign policy doesn't want me to know and it is favorable toward high quality accessible content. everyone concerned about competition and the competition gave you shit that makes state run news a breath of fresh air

> 99% of the time I'm not looking for things the ministry of foreign policy doesn't want me to know The other 1% is the news that actually matters.

No, lots of things matter.

That 1% is important, and we absolutely need to make sure we have alternatives for that, but the point is that we shouldn't throw out that 99% just because it's not 100%.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#122

Post by theklub »

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?!?!?!?"

Well HN isn't just one person so yeah you're going to get different responses.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#123

Post by serge2k »

dredmorbius wrote: post #93
paulddraper wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?!?!?!?"

The problem is the business model. All of these behaviors 1) are hostile to high-quality accessble content and 2) are fundamentally driven by advertising (or its failure). Information is a public good. This doesn't mean it costs nothing to produce (the contrary), but high-quality public information has a high positive externality to the common wealth (that is, the commonwealth), and is essential in a democratic socie…

> But supporters of the model I've proposed include Richard M. Stallman of FSF and Phil Hunt of Pirate Party, UK, among others.

Those sound like great sources on how to monetize your IP effectively.

Who controls this? The Government? All media is now state sponsored is a questionable model.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#124

Post by dredmorbius »

bpodgursky wrote: post #112
cloudjacker wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and this is why I like state-run media sources. 99% of the time I'm not looking for things the ministry of foreign policy doesn't want me to know and it is favorable toward high quality accessible content. everyone concerned about competition and the competition gave you shit that makes state run news a breath of fresh air

> 99% of the time I'm not looking for things the ministry of foreign policy doesn't want me to know The other 1% is the news that actually matters.

The current system is vastly more invasive of reader privacy than the alternative suggested.

The publishing site, numerous third-party metrics providers, advertising providers, ISPs, and any MITM listener has access to the full metadata, at a minimum, and potentially full data.

You'd need to disintermediate via Tor (blocked or disabled by a great many sites -- Cloudflare and Google are particularly culpable here), or other means, to avoid this.

I've made a habit of using Tor extensively for a number of reasons, tab management among them (opening trivial articles in a Tor browser and having them wash out helps, very slightly, in managing my tab explosion in Firefox/Android).

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#125

Post by serge2k »

hokuriku wrote: post #110

You know what this means, right? Jeff Bezos will increase investment into AWS and Blue Origin, while not investing anything into improving engineer work-life balance. Seriously, at least cover MSP and transit! Even partially covering a transit pass would be nice! Sincerely, an Amazon Vancouver SDE I

> Seriously, at least cover MSP

Seriously? That's only what, 60 a month to cover it? Do you guys at least get vision and dental?

Here in Seattle they give you benefits (I only used dental, it was fine for normal treatment) and an orca card (transit pass).

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#126

Post by adventured »

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?

> Why does this rationale not apply to its cloud business

Radically different margins. AWS is running on a 23.5% operating income margin. Retail doesn't come close to that. Operating margins on their traditional North America business are 3.5%, and 1.3% internationally. Retail has to do almost seven times the sales of AWS to match the operating income.

The cash cow they have in AWS, is supporting the outsized valuation in their stock. Once investors realized what they had in AWS, by revealing how it was doing, the stock soared to a new level of high valuation. You can go back to December 2014 as see when this happened, the stock had been stagnant for a while, then doubled in one year following the reveal of how AWS was performing. AWS will pay for a lot of patience with shareholders.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#127

Post by dredmorbius »

cm2012 wrote: post #105
dredmorbius wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the business model. All of these behaviors 1) are hostile to high-quality accessble content and 2) are fundamentally driven by advertising (or its failure). Information is a public good. This doesn't mean it costs nothing to produce (the contrary), but high-quality public information has a high positive externality to the common wealth (that is, the commonwealth), and is essential in a democratic socie…

Since the government doesn't currently pay for Media, how should journalists currently get paid?

I've updated parent post with links. The G+ and Reddit set contain suggestions on actual mechanism, though I'm open on that.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#128

Post by adventured »

DasIch wrote: 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?

Allowing AWS to print money, resulted in adding nearly $150 billion to Amazon's market capitalization.

Investors have placed an immense value on AWS in the last year plus, since it was revealed how much operating income it was spitting off.

Bezos had been looking for a higher level cash machine (AWS has seven times the margins of retail) for a long, long time that he could utilize to step up to another level of financial capabilities and competition. Something that might sustain his ability to fight with Google and Apple. Fire Phone was meant to be that for example, which is why they attempted to charge premium prices; they thought they could slice off some iPhone type profit out of it.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#129

Post by aninhumer »

dredmorbius wrote: post #93
paulddraper wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?!?!?!?"

The problem is the business model. All of these behaviors 1) are hostile to high-quality accessble content and 2) are fundamentally driven by advertising (or its failure). Information is a public good. This doesn't mean it costs nothing to produce (the contrary), but high-quality public information has a high positive externality to the common wealth (that is, the commonwealth), and is essential in a democratic socie…

>micropayments. I disagree strongly, see Nick Szabo, Clay Shirky, and Hal Varian as to why not.

So my initial reaction to their arguments was that none of their complaints matter as long as it's cheap enough. The fact that my water is metered doesn't make me anxious about usage, because it's too cheap to care.

But of course, that's because water is fungible. I have no fear that the water company is going to start sending me expensive mineral water while I'm in the shower to run up my bill.

But the exact same forces that lead sites to ridiculous extremes of obnoxious advertising, are likely to push up their micro-costs high enough that people can't ignore them, and most likely stop visiting.

The only way I can see it ever working is if there were some way to regulate the costs to avoid this. But I'm not sure there's any way to do that for something so non-fungible.

Re: Amazon Reports Surge in Profit

#130

Post by mrep »

GeechieCloud wrote: post #87
abritishguy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

It seems like amazon is using an "all in" strategy which seems to be working out pretty well. They first focused on porting the entire amazon retail website onto AWS which I believe they completed in 2011. They also went "all in" with the service oriented architecture for AWS. Both of these have paid off quite handsomely.

Granted, that hasn't always paid off (we all know how the fire phone turned out), but the wins have definitely made up for the losses.

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