AWS Lifts Amazon Q1 Earnings - Cloud Computing Proves Viable Second Stream To Ecommerce

For the last 12 months, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been a $9bn business. Bezos expects it to be a $10bn annual business.

Within the AWS offering, Amazon offers EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Customers include Netflix, Autodesk and Nasa/JPL. EC2 works in conjunction with VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) - which allows users to create their own virtual networking environment within AWS, including IP address ranges, subnets and so forth.

RBS shares fall 67% to 11.6p (Low of the Day 10p), KBC drops 20%, $19m Compensation for Bartz

RBS, 58% owned by the government, slumped to a 23 year low today. FTSE closed at 4108.5 (38.6 points down).

KBC, whose stock trades on Euronext Brussels, slumped 20%, going from about 16 euro to 12 euro and finishing around 13 euro. The stock has been tumbling since a Moody's report Thursday said it had revised assumptions used to evaluate KBC's CDOs. KBC were forced to issue a statement saying the share price had come under pressure as a result of rumours circulating in the market.

In tech, Yahoo's new CEO, Carol Bartz, will reportedly get $19m in compensation, in addition to bonus and stock options (base == $1m). She will not be able to exercise her options until after 4 years. Carol's board memberships are detailed here. She made her career at Autodesk, her profile is here. In 2007 rumours of a Microsoft bid for Yahoo send YHOO stock up 18% in one day. Will Microsoft bid again for Yahoo in 2009?