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Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year

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Re: Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year

#81
post #61

Off Topic, Previously I was always put off by Amazon's design. You can click on anything Amazon related, AWS included and see some fugly UI and layout. And i got to check AWS again and i am pleasantly surprised things have improved dramatically!

Summary: Many design elements work for Amazon.com mainly because of its status as the world's largest and most established e-commerce site. Normal sites should not copy Amazon's design.

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/amazon-no-e-commerce-role-mo...

Re: Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart is cheaper. Significantly cheaper. You don't have to pay $100-$300 per year plus Amazon's typical 10-20% price premium* in exchange for "free" 2-day shipping. If you live in the right place you can pick up the goods same-day from Walmart, maybe even on your commute, so for some people it's more convenient too. * The usual caveat about everything varying with geography applies here too, I'm sure.

Is "in-store pickup" really that popular? When I need something in a few days (or later), I'll order it from Amazon when I think about it. If I need something "now" or today, I'll just drive to the store and go get it. I, personally, don't really see the point of the "in-store pickup" -- why order it online if I have to go there to get it anyways?

> Is "in-store pickup" really that popular?

Yeah.

> I'll just drive to the store and go get it.

Its faster if you know what is stocked at your local Walmart. Order on your lunch break, pick it up on the way home without running around the store for 30min.

Re: Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year

#83
post #61

Off Topic, Previously I was always put off by Amazon's design. You can click on anything Amazon related, AWS included and see some fugly UI and layout. And i got to check AWS again and i am pleasantly surprised things have improved dramatically!

Ugh, I don't know if it's just me, but browsing for anything on Amazon.com really irks me. First, the page loads, then a bunch of other stuff loads in the background. The problem is that you try scrolling after the page loads, but the web site is so demanding on the browser that it frequently breaks scrolling. Plus, the tab title flickers the entire time this is going on.

It's clearly a symptom of a large number of people working on stuff that all ends up on the same page.

Re: Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year

#84
post #5

36% of Amazon's operating profit is now from AWS. That's crazy!

Bezos long ago figured out that the best tax strategy in modern America for a public company is to operate without profit. The company operates with a relatively (to the revenue) small loss, maintaining positive cash flow by issuing and selling additional stock. Selling new stock is (remarkably) tax free. The dilution is negligible since the stock is valued by the revenue (not profit so much). Everybody benefits: executives are now compensated mainly by the RSUs and options, and the corporate profit is only a tax drag that does not really affect this compensation.

Re: Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really feels like they design the thing to make that happen. I got stung for over $100 just as a casual user, because I never guessed that I had to click through all the (slow loading) regions to see the instances and volumes and snapshots I might have burning money. The web interface is a total clusterfuck.

Also their documentation. I frankly find it a personal achievement to hear of people successfully navigating their documentation to a working solution. Just like you, I got burned for about a hundred dollars whenever they switched their UI for EC2 to only show instances per region. I have no idea when that change happened, but they weren't loud enough announcing it.

While they're desperately lacking in good getting started documentation, the reference docs are some of the best in the industry. I'll grant they're not pretty, but they cover everything in detail.

Re: Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year

#86
post #18
post #13

It's only a matter of time before they split AWS from Amazon, just wondering why they're waiting so long.

I'm waiting for Amazon Prime to start bundling server time.

That would only make sense for a very small portion of their users, and confuse a great many.

I think the more likely path is going to be services like their photo library, which can clearly make use of AWS, but doesn't directly expose it to customers. I could see some sort of backup service happening in the near future, and someone else mentioned Echo.

Re: Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year

#87

I'm trying to understand why large companies use AWS for their primary infrastructure. Both AWS and Azure are obscenely expensive when compared to buying servers and colocating them somewhere. The cloud model works well for bootstrapped startups, but anyone with the resources to buy and manage their own servers is crazy if they use AWS or Azure as their primary server platform.

I feel like this is a myth that just won't go away.

If you run your 24/7 steady state load using on-demand hourly charged instances, and don't factor in the cost of managing your own hardware and data centres then yes, EC2 is hideously expensive.

If you plan your spend (much like you would in buying your own hardware and DC space) it really isn't - reserved instances considerably reduce prices, and come with bulk discounts when you buy enough of them.

It's been a while, but when costing out our migration to EC2 it came out cheaper than any other VM provider, and was in the same ballpark as leasing our own hardware.

Re: Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart is cheaper. Significantly cheaper. You don't have to pay $100-$300 per year plus Amazon's typical 10-20% price premium* in exchange for "free" 2-day shipping. If you live in the right place you can pick up the goods same-day from Walmart, maybe even on your commute, so for some people it's more convenient too. * The usual caveat about everything varying with geography applies here too, I'm sure.

Is "in-store pickup" really that popular? When I need something in a few days (or later), I'll order it from Amazon when I think about it. If I need something "now" or today, I'll just drive to the store and go get it. I, personally, don't really see the point of the "in-store pickup" -- why order it online if I have to go there to get it anyways?

There is one advantage to ordering online for local store pickup that is worth considering. The online price can be - from my experience - cheaper than than the in-store price. I was surprised to find this on a number of different products recently.

Re: Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year

#89

I'm trying to understand why large companies use AWS for their primary infrastructure. Both AWS and Azure are obscenely expensive when compared to buying servers and colocating them somewhere. The cloud model works well for bootstrapped startups, but anyone with the resources to buy and manage their own servers is crazy if they use AWS or Azure as their primary server platform.

Is it? Cloud providers bring you not just localized infrastructure, but distributed infrastructure, with clear mechanisms for scaling as needed, plus support, etc. With AWS, you have a predictable cost, predictable up-time, and ability to scale at peak, and your costs are spread over time, rather than all up front. With your own servers you have to build out to handle peak load (and run mostly dormant during non-peak…

So why would you not have localized infrastructure to handle average loads and use AWS to scale to peak only when necessary? Why use AWS even for your average loads?

Re: Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year

#90
post #5

36% of Amazon's operating profit is now from AWS. That's crazy!

Not really. Amazon as a whole is dial-a-yield depending on the rate of profit reinvested to grow existing/new capabilities. If Bezos wanted, he could halt expansion and return more profit in the short-term, but that would delay long-term revenue (and hence profit) generation plans (however long he's able to find other business expansion directions which avoid the perils of overexpansion and also avoid plateauing for too long).

Also, some companies like Netflix and Zynga, which are AWS'es main customers, are fine to pay AWS a premium to have most of their infrastructure better managed and on-demand. Whereas most sizable businesses deploy something like OpenStack for baseline load on real, bare metal gear they buy and use AWS for traditional uses: PoCs, disaster recovery and peaking capacity. Startups tend to use AWS at first because it's easy, popular and low-risk, but it's not a panacea because it tends to get very expensive, very quickly. (It is however, clearly, a great business in itself, which probably should be spun-off.)

Disclaimer: I was with a premier enterprise AWS external consultancy shop early on that had significant access to capabilities and expanded limitation perks beyond other shops. Interestingly, they've built limitation increase requests available to most everyone now, which were manual before and depended on how much clout a customer or vendor garnered.

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