Google’s cloud business is growing faster than all competitors

Google’s cloud business, which includes infrastructure and software subscriptions, showed growth of 35% year-on-year to $11.35 billion in the third quarter – a year ago the dynamics in this area were 29%. Google Cloud has demonstrated the fastest development among competitors.

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Amazon Web Services, which remains the market leader, grew 19% to $27.45 billion, a division twice the size of Google Cloud but growing at half the rate. Second-place Microsoft’s revenue from Azure and other cloud services rose 33% year-over-year. Five of the six “trillionaire” tech companies reported financial results this week, with Nvidia being the exception. Near-simultaneous reports from Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft are helping investors gauge how the cloud wars are unfolding.

Alphabet has traditionally depended on digital advertising, but it no longer gives reason to call itself a slacker – the rapid growth of Google Cloud indicates the diversification of the company’s revenues, analysts say. Last year, the business made a profit for the first time, and in the third quarter of 2024 its operating margin was 17%. AWS’ operating margin for the same period was 38%, which analysts called colossal. At the start of the year, Amazon increased the service life of its servers from five to six years, helping it lift operating margins by two percentage points. Microsoft this year separated Azure from other products in its report – AI services have helped the cloud division achieve significant growth. Demand for the company’s services exceeds available capacity – Azure’s growth slowed down slightly in the quarter, but in the first half of 2025 it promises to reach higher values.

Amazon also admitted that demand exceeds available capacity – the company uses not only Nvidia accelerators, but also its own Trainium 2, in which customers are also showing interest. Google is now working on the sixth generation of its own TPU accelerators; Microsoft introduced its own Maia chips at the end of last year, but they are still used for the company’s own services and are not offered for rent to customers.

Oracle, the fourth-largest US player, will not report its quarterly report until December. In the previous year, the company reported that revenue from cloud infrastructure grew by 45% to $2.2 billion—a quarter earlier, the growth was 42%. Oracle has also entered into partnerships with larger competitors that will make its databases available on their platforms, which also promises to be a growth driver for its business.