Cloud Economics: Microsoft, Google & Amazon

Yesterday Microsoft launched its Azure cloud platform, so it is time for another spreadsheet. To properly compare Microsoft, Google and Amazon, I am using the gross profit (instead of revenue) and net profit numbers. Gross profit is, in some sense, the real revenue of a company after paying its outside suppliers; gross profit is what is available to pay its employees, pay the rent, and so on. For a software company, the cost of goods sold is close to zero, so most of the revenue is gross profit. But for a retailer, as much as 70-80% of revenue goes to its suppliers, so gross profit is the better measure of the economic productivity the company achieves. The numbers below use rough annualized estimates based on the most recent quarter.

Do you notice the dramatic difference? Google and Microsoft are in another planet altogether compared to Amazon. Google has practically the same headcount as Amazon, yet drives three times the gross profit. The numbers really illustrate Amazon’s competitive strategy in cloud computing; to quote Nick Carr:

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