Amazon.com Tops Third Quarter Earnings Estimates. Amazon.com released its third quarter earnings Thursday. As expected, its huge cloud business was the top performer. Amazon Web Services (AWS), which raked in $4.6 billion in revenue, just beat Wall Street estimates. This is 42% more than the previous quarter’s $4.1 billion, and nearly 12% more than the prior quarter. The quarter ended Sept. 30 saw an operating income of $1.2 billion, which was 38% higher than expected. AWS was once more the fastest-growing business of its parent company. It outpaced the year-overyear growth of both the North America (35%) & International (29%) retail units. AWS accounted for 11% of Amazon.com’s total earnings in Q3. According to recent earnings reports, AWS growth appears to be slowing. Despite generating record-high revenue, this period is almost tied with the previous for the platform’s slowest annual growth rate since Q2 2015 (when revenue soared by 81%): Reporting Period AWS Revenue, (Billions) Year over-Year Revenue Growth (%) Q3 2017 $4.642 Q2 2017 $3.743 Q1 2016 $2.957 Q1 2016 $2.664 Q4 2015 $2.469 Q3 2015 $2.464 Q1 2016 $2.664 Q4 2015 $2.464 Q3 of 2015$1.8 81 Q1 2015 * $1.649 * $1.649 * $1.649 * First reported as a line item. In its earnings report, Microsoft on Thursday reported a 90% increase in year-over-year revenue for its Azure cloud platform. However, AWS’ $18 billion annual run rate is not to be underestimated. The quarter’s milestones have been cited by executives as key drivers for its growth.