[jackhack]

Just to clarify:

Amazon's "main business" is AWS, not their online store. For many years their store operated at a loss. Don't get me wrong, amazon.com is a HUGE business, but it's not Bezos' breadwinner.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/all-of-amazons-2017-operating-...

[fjp]

It only operated at a loss because they were plowing massive amounts of money into their delivery infrastructure. Revenue matters more than net income

[sydd]

Also because they are trying to estabilish monopoly. Amazon's long term plan is to kill every other big retailer.

[BurningFrog]

To be fair, that's the hope of every company.

[nl]

That's nonsense.

AWS is a very large business, and much more profitable than selling physical goods online.

But Amazon's overall revenue was $56.6B (Q3 2018[1]) and "only" $6.68B of that was AWS. By comparison, revenue from Amazon's advertising business is $2.5B - and no one is claiming that is their main line of business.

Even the article you point to shows Amazon made a profit of $1.69B on North American ecommerce vs $1.35B profit from AWS.

So yeah - AWS is a high margin business, but no where near their "main business".

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/25/amazon-earnings-q3-2018.html

[outoftheabyss]

their main business is their online store, your linked article proves as much. If the online store was to disappear tomorrow the value of Amazon as a company would decrease much more than if it were AWS. It is proportionately more profitable but that doesn't make it the main business