It's a bit harder to see from the present, but the magic sauce they added 25 years ago was selling things on the Internet. Obvious today, and obvious in hindsight, but the road to here is littered with companies that tried the same but didn't make it.

Aws was a blip on the rader for years when amazon was still one of the richest companies.

Look at their retained earnings on the balance sheet. It really only started going up when aws started getting more popular. Amazon always had an insane valuation.

Walmart is a good comparison. Amazon is in the volume game just like them.