Amazon appears to be able to ramp of profit at will via controlling expenditures and promotions. Review this years numbers vs the prior years. I think they wanted to show a investor what it looks like when they 'wanted' to turn a profit instead of plowing money back into everything imaginable.

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAMZN&fstype=ii&ei=...

If I'm wrong and they are still plowing money back into everything and are still throwing off numbers like this (compared to the past) ~ that's simply amazing.

even after thinking through that defense - a 191 P/E is above my understanding. I think their technology and software revenues are seen a hyper growth

It's possible. I did a research report on Amazon many years ago since I kept hearing people gripe about them not being profitable. They turned a large enough profit on that year that they could've wiped out all their debt in 1 to 2 years. They could then just keep pulling in profit. It was clear they were instead re-investing all their money back into the company's operations for growth and dominance. They also had this growing business selling computing resources that had taken over a new market with projected long-term potential. ;)

I think AWS is masking the non tech size profits of a bunch of warehouses moving and storing goods.

I'll bite. How about for every incremental $1 in ecommerce spending, Amazon gets about 50 cents? And (roughly speaking) many new startups start out and grow on AWS providing new revenue as well as valuable intelligence.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-will-account-for-mor...

https://stratechery.com/2016/the-amazon-tax/

Online sales in the United States are expected to reach $523 billion in the next five years, up 56% from $335 billion in 2015, and mobile devices are expected to be a key driver in that growth, Forrester Research Inc. says.

https://www.internetretailer.com/2016/01/29/online-sales-wil...