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Comment by RhodesianHunter | Hacker News Reader

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RhodesianHunter·

You should tell AWS about that race to the bottom while they continue to produce a majority of Amazon's profit.

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Someone can still win a race to the bottom. Look at Walmart a generation ago in retail.

Advertising is way more profitable than AWS. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasongoldberg/2022/02/04/amazon...

That is based on huge assumptions, and it is unclear how the internal billing works (i.e is the Ad business consuming AWS services "free" or is there internal chargebacks happening). Is the AWS Revenue just from external customers using the services.

> is the Ad business consuming AWS services "free" or is there internal chargebacks happening

AWS bills Amazon an internal rate. It’s a closely held secret that few employees know but supposedly it’s better than at-cost.

It is not secret. There is an internal spreadsheet that documents all the prices.

Everyone has access! Everyone I worked with at Amazon knew the prices they were spending for the different services they were using or thinking of using.

How could that work? Don't managers have budgets? Do they get drugged and blindfolded while their departments' AWS costs are deducted every month?

> While Amazon did not disclose the operating income generated from their ad business, it is almost certainly bigger than the income generated by AWS

Not exactly making a strong case.

heres a sankey diagram of q3 FY 2022 for Amazon...https://imgur.com/a/OupE8ES. (from https://www.appeconomyinsights.com/p/amazon-day-1)

Ads + Twitch = 9.5B, AWS = 20.5B

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