without Andy (and AWS), I'd posit that Jeff would just be another regular old billionaire who'd own a sports team, but otherwise folks would not know much about.
I kind of agree. But without AWS, Amazon could never have become the Amazon that we know today. AWS brings in the vast majority of the profits (sometimes >100%) for Amazon, despite being a modest proportion of revenue (~10%).
This is what generates the funding necessary for Amazon to do the crazy things that make Amazon amazing. Amazon - AWS = digital Walmart. Big and profitable, but not Amazon.
Interestingly, if you go international, Amazon is either not present at all or a niche player as an online store in many countries. But in terms of cloud infrastructure they've become the universal global default / premium service. It is fascinating to me that they have beaten players like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle etc. to this status. I actually have to mount a business case in my organisation NOT to use AWS even though all the desktops and half the servers are pure Microsoft stack.
While regular consumers may not know what AWS is, Amazon's core business was able to sustain losses for 10+ years only because of profits coming from there.
Ask outside tech bubble and 9/10 never even heard of AWS,even though half of the things they use run on it. The retail front-end is the PR, while AWS is a magic money tree.
I mostly agree but I also think AWS is probably more in the public consciousness than most people would think (in the US anyway). They have TV advertisement slots with NFL for crying out loud. That said, most people probably don't actually know what it is, just that they've heard of it.
As "cloud" and "AI" become more and more accepted generic terms for technology to the public and I think AWS may even over take the PR position.
Fair point,I was commenting from European point of view,where tech companies are often invisible,apart from maybe Google or Apple with their ads plastered all over the place.I reckon an average American is more likely to tell what Oracle or AWS is just purely because of the amount of ads they've been exposed to, compared to an average European
Most people have no idea what AWS is, but know what Amazon the consumer business is.
AWS is only well known among tech circles.