Amazon AWS = $1/2 Billion of 2008 revenue?

There is a lot of speculation that amazon aws made a big chunk of $542 million in revenue as reported yesterday in a blowout quarter for Amazon. I am a huge fan of Jeff Bezos. His passion and commitment to his company are truly remarkable. And he is constantly transforming the company and its products, sort of like Steve Jobs.

InformationWeek author John Foley speculated that it helped their blowout quarter –

What we know is that AWS sales are included in a category called “other” — included are AWS, Amazon Enterprise Solutions, co-branded credit cards, and miscellaneous marketing — and that overall sales in that category totaled $175 million in the quarter, a 34% increase over a year ago. For the year, Amazon’s other revenue was $542 million, up 42% compared with 2007.

He could definitley know more than us mortals — I would not be suprised if it turns out that its true. It makes sense for Amazon not to want to attract too much attention during their hyper growth phase. Amazon AWS seems to have pulled way ahead in terms of volume from Google, Nirvanix and other players in this space – they will soon see the advantages of a market leader – like Microsoft, Oracle have over the years.

I also suspect that they are taking market share away from ebay (if you look at their results). That might also be helping them grow in this environments.

Kudos Bezos!

Here’s some interesting data on Amazon S3’s growth. Their growth rate is very nice, as seen from a post (http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1059-amazon-s3-stats)

I dont know how accurate this data is, but indicates a growth rate of 100%+ in 2008 for just Amazon S3. Sweet.