That's how people justify investing in Amazon. But I don't know how they think Amazon can just stop reinvesting one day and make money. Every business line Amazon has is hyper competitive. Can Amazon actually raise prices in any of their businesses?

>> Every business line Amazon has is hyper competitive. Can Amazon actually raise prices in any of their businesses?

They have been for some time. Prime memberships, AWS pricing, etc. The lines are "competitive" but Amazon is so far ahead in most that it doesn't matter.

When was the last time AWS prices went up?

Worked in many AWS shops, I bet almost none of them switch to alternatives if the price rose 10%.

Aren’t their costs going up at least 25-30% because of Meltdown/Spectre mitigation performance penalties? Would they weather another 10-20% price hike on top of that?

25-30% is pretty pessimistic. Maybe on certain services, like a Redis box. On others, like your average web service, it probably won't move the needle much.

I'd ballpark around 5%. And that's for people who weren't overprovisioned in the first place, which is most people.

> Amazon can just stop reinvesting one day and make money

Does the money disappear if they stop reinvesting?

If you are a tech company... Yes.