Amazon reported blow-out earnings today. The company’s cloud computing business -which include Amazon Web Services – is up a whopping 81% from a year ago. Sure, Amazon sells and ships $23 billion of stuff in a single quarter, but it is only making 2% of profit on those sales. Its cloud computing business is now a $6 billion-a-year business and growing rapidly. The other thing that’s growing rapidly is the office space that Amazon is devouring in Seattle’s Lake Union District. The Seattle Times reports that Amazon may occupy as much as 10 million square feet in downtown Seattle in another few years. By comparison, Microsoft occupies an estimated 14.6 million square feet spread across the greater Seattle area.
