Amazon’s bet on cloud computing almost a decade ago continues to look brilliant.
Amazon Web Services generated $1.8 billion in revenue during the second quarter, Amazon revealed this afternoon. It has now generated almost $6 billion in sales over the past four quarters.
Growth in the division accelerated during the quarter to 82% year-over-year, up from 49% growth in the first quarter. That reflects that it’s now been more than a year since Amazon had to dramatically cut its AWS pricing, following a major price cut by rival Google.
AWS generated almost $400 million in operating income during the quarter, and almost $1 billion over the past four quarters. It represented almost 40% of Amazon’s consolidated-segment operating income for the second quarter in a row—despite only generating about 8% of the company’s sales.
In short: AWS is one of Amazon’s most valuable assets.