Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by jon-wood » Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 8:02 AM UTC

nulltype wrote: post #96

jon-wood wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dis…

What about bandwidth costs?

Frankly, they're a rounding error with our current workload. If you're in the business of running a CDN or streaming video you may want to look at other options - Netflix with their caching servers in ISP's data centres are a pretty good example of this.

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

#102

Post by egwor » Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 8:09 AM UTC

cryowaffle wrote: post #57

click170 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact reason why I refuse to give amazon a non-prepaid visa card. Where I live, every grocery store sells them without requiring ID.

Are you trying to protect your identity or just make sure the bill doesn't go over a set amount? If the latter then it shouldn't matter if ID is required.

I guess not needing an id just makes it easier. It's always a pain having to provide two forms of proof of address

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

#103

Post by JosephRedfern » Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 8:35 AM UTC

syllogism wrote: post #36

afarrell wrote: post #9

I wonder how much of that is people forgetting to shut down unused EC2 instances

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.

Whenever I've had a similar issue, I've emailed to explain and been given a full refund.

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

#104

Post by BillinghamJ » Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 8:53 AM UTC

ytdht wrote: post #70

syllogism wrote: post #36

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.

I got stung with it too, but was refunded...

Amazon are exceptionally generous with refunds, both with AWS and retail.

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

#105

Post by BillinghamJ » Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 8:57 AM UTC

chx wrote: post #100

downandout wrote: post #60

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.

Why? Why colo and not rent dedicated servers...? I tried to understand the logic behind colo but I can't.

It's cheaper, drastically so at scale. You just need to be running enough for it to be cost efficient to have an ops person.

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

#106

Post by sudhirj » Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 9:06 AM UTC

cft wrote: post #84

fnayr wrote: 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: exe…

Isn't this pretty much the best strategy anywhere in the world? Is there any country that taxes by revenue?

Apple has this weird problem of being so profitable that they have no clue what to do with all that money. And then everyone picks on them for their loophole-based tax mitigation strategies.

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

#107

Post by sudhirj » Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 9:11 AM UTC

Can someone explain how Amazon is different (in investor mindset, not legality) from a Ponzi scheme? It seems like retail companies (and even some startups) exist solely by churning investors with new money. Everyone invests based on expected profit at the end of the rainbow, and a lot of money is made selling to the next set of investors who want to carry on rainbow-chasing.

If Amazon were to stop and start making a profit, wouldn't they immediately be undercut by the next generation of quasi-ponzi companies who are now willing to sacrifice short term profits?

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

#108

Post by sudhirj » Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 9:12 AM UTC

sudhirj wrote: post #107

Can someone explain how Amazon is different (in investor mindset, not legality) from a Ponzi scheme? It seems like retail companies (and even some startups) exist solely by churning investors with new money. Everyone invests based on expected profit at the end of the rainbow, and a lot of money is made selling to the next set of investors who want to carry on rainbow-chasing. If Amazon were to stop and start making a…

It seems like the economic equivalent of getting on the tiger's back. You just have to hold on and keep going.

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

#109

Post by GregQuinn » Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 9:12 AM UTC

jlgaddis wrote: post #71

jjoonathan wrote: post #54

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?

Here in the UK "in-store pickup" is known as "click and collect" and it's becoming very popular. In addition the on line price is often lower than the in store price.

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

#110

Post by vidarh » Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 9:17 AM UTC

bbrazil wrote: post #92

bmir-alum-007 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> it's not a panacea because it tends to get very expensive, very quickly. I've investigated colocs near some AWS locations and found AWS to be around 20% cheaper than the cheapest viable option. With AWS's occasional price drops on top of that and general flexibility it's not a difficult choice. One thing I found was that most providers were trying to sell vertical reliability (e.g. hardware RAID1), with a matching…

The bare-metal stuff I manage typically end up at 1/3 to 1/2 of AWS costs. Yes, fully loaded costs including salaries and office costs for anyone touching the servers.

You can certainly find more expensive options than AWS if you look, but similarly paying less than for AWS is easy too unless you start relying on specific AWS features.