I'm not an accountant, but when I want to understand corporate finance technicalities, I'll look up the definitions on investopedia.com. They do a pretty good j

I'm not an accountant, but when I want to understand corporate finance technicalities, I'll look up the definitions on investopedia.com. They do a pretty good job of putting them into "layman speak." Revenue is what you think it means[0]: 10% of all the cash Amazon took in over a given period was from AWS. Operating income is "a synonym for earnings before interest and taxes"[1]. So, in effect what they're saying is that AWS is so profitable that it has been subsidizing loss-centers in Amazon's business. Edit: I should add that Amazon has a history of not turning a very large profit (if at all), and instead choosing to re-invest income on growth and R&D. So the behavior itself is not all that newsworthy, it more just speaks to the importance of AWS. [0] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/revenue.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/revenue.asp [1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/operatingincome.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/operatingincome.asp