More of the Same From Amazon

Amazon delivered more of the same in yesterday’s earnings presentation as the company continues to favor growth over profits. For years now, Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has made a point of sacrificing short-term profits in favor of investments aimed at long-term success, as our chart nicely illustrates.

One of these long-term investments is now bearing fruit, as the company revealed in yesterday’s earnings report: Amazon Web Services, the company’s quickly growing cloud storage division, generated $1.57 billion in revenue between January and March and is on track to generate $1 billion in profits this year. On a revenue run rate of $6+ billion per year, Amazon’s cloud business is on par, if not bigger than those of industry heavyweights such as IBM and Microsoft.