Despite both Microsoft and Google making big steps in their cloud business, neither of them can keep up with AWS, which is about to post its most impressive revenues ever, easily eclipsing its rivals' market share
AWS said its revenues hit $4.6 billion (3.5 billion) for the last quarter, taking its total to $12.3 billion (9.4 billion) to date in 2017, with a quarter still to go. Analysts think its total revenues for 2017 could easily rise to $18 billion (13.7 billion), solidifying its position as the most successful cloud business in existence.
Despite Amazon being one of the biggest retail businesses too, its cloud revenues have outstripped those generated by its online marketplace.
Coming in at second place, Microsoft has put a lot of effort into its cloud services too, with revenues hitting $5 billion (3.8 billion) in the third quarter of the year. Although that total beats AWS's revenues, it's important to note that total also includes Office 365 figures and results for its other cloud-based services and its infrastructure business.
Over the entire year, experts forecast the company to generate $20 billion (15.2 billion) in sales, although as the company doesn't split its cloud division into software and services, it's tricky to provide a side-by-side comparison of Microsoft and Google's infrastructure revenues.
Similarly, Google also reports its cloud revenues in a rather convoluted way, combining its figures with revenues from the Google Play app store and its hardware sales. Last year, that topped $3.4 billion (2.6 billion) for the last quarter of 2017 - putting it way behind Microsoft and AWS. It is, however, investing heavily in its cloud unit, employing almost 2,500 people for the division in the last three months.
