According to the head of Amazon Web Services division, Andy Jassy, the expansion of its cloud computing operation could “end up being the largest business in Amazon” and help it become “the largest technology company in the world.”
Amazon Web Services’ cloud computing division was started in 2003 and offers data storage and software to third-party organisations, including the Nasdaq stock exchange and Netflix, with analysts estimating that it turns over around $1.5 billion a year (or 3 per cent of Amazon’s total revenue).
Speaking to the Telegraph Jassy said there was no plan set in stone to “own” the internet but that Amazon had launched its cloud computing division partly because it recognised that web services would be the building blocks of the internet.
“We asked ourselves, if you believed developers would build [web] applications from scratch using these web services, then the operating system became the internet,” he said.
“And then we said, if there is going to be an internet operating system, what could we meaningfully contribute to it?”