Amazon (AMZN)

Amazon's top line is really three businesses bolted together: North America and International retail (online stores, third-party seller fees, and Prime subscriptions), Amazon Web Services, and a fast-growing advertising business reported partly inside the retail segments. AWS generates less than a fifth of total revenue but has historically supplied the majority of operating income, which is why per-second revenue here tracks retail volume far more closely than it tracks Amazon's profitability.

Retail margins are thin and seasonal—Q4 holiday volume and Prime Day promotions move units without moving profit much, while price competition from Walmart and rising fulfillment and delivery costs squeeze the retail segments further. AWS itself faces share pressure from Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, and enterprise cloud spending patterns can shift AWS growth rates independently of how much merchandise Amazon sells.

Because advertising and AWS carry much higher margins than shipping boxes, Amazon's revenue mix matters more than its revenue size; a dollar of ad revenue drops far more to operating income than a dollar of grocery sales. Set against Microsoft's page here, Amazon's total revenue is larger, yet Microsoft's operating margin is meaningfully higher—a reminder that this counter measures throughput, not profitability.

The figure powering this page is consolidated net sales from Amazon's 10-K, split evenly into a per-second rate; it excludes gross merchandise volume sold by third-party sellers that Amazon doesn't recognize as its own revenue, a distinction that matters because most units sold on Amazon.com are technically third-party inventory. Segment-level AWS revenue and operating income are disclosed quarterly and are the better source for cloud-specific analysis.