Amazon and Alphabet Surpass Microsoft in Cloud Computing Growth

In the cloud computing arena, Alphabet and Amazon are rapidly accelerating their growth rates, while Microsoft's growth rate barely budged.

The three companies - Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), and Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL) - have thriving cloud computing businesses, with each recently reporting results for its latest quarter.

Alphabet's Google Cloud is leading the pack, growing at an 82% year-over-year rate. In contrast, Amazon Web Services (AWS) grew at a 37% pace, and Microsoft Azure rose 43%. However, despite being in last place by growth rate alone, Amazon may not be the loser.

AWS' growth accelerated significantly from 28% in the first quarter to 37% in the latest quarter, suggesting that Amazon is gaining momentum. Meanwhile, Microsoft's growth rate barely picked up, leading some to question the health of its cloud business.