For most of its life, Amazon sacrificed profits if it could build another few warehouses to ship orders to customers more quickly or find some other investment to fuel its growth.
Now, it cannot avoid showing big profits thanks to the lucrative cloud computing business in which it has improbably become a leader.
On Thursday, Amazon reported net income of $857 million in its most recent quarter, the second quarter in a row in which it has shown a record profit. Its net income for those three months was also more than nine times the amount for the same period last year.
