| Hi everyone, it's Nico. Andy Jassy will soon step into the leading role of chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc., and like Liam Neeson in those increasingly stale action films, he brings "a very particular set of skills" to the job. Chief among them is his ability to humble otherwise proud technology giants. Jassy has presided over Amazon Web Services for more than 15 years. In that time, it has upended the IT landscape and continues to own about a third of the cloud infrastructure market, according to data from Synergy Research Group. Through relentless product development and an early-mover advantage, AWS has set the pace, with runner-up Microsoft Corp. and No. 3 Google trying to catch up. It seems likely AWS will only grow stronger when Jassy ascends to the C-suite's top job, where he will have more influence over investments and strategy. While Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and parent Alphabet Inc., tweeted his congratulations to Jassy, he knows firsthand how effective the cloud king can be. Google has been in the cloud game for about 13 years and despite steady progress, still hasn't broken through as a market leader. For a normal company, this might not be an issue. But Google isn't used to losing. It operates the world's most popular search engine, video website, mobile operating system and internet browser. Google is also known for having an itchy trigger finger, killing some projects that don't glide to market supremacy. Just in the last two months, Loon, a plan to beam internet service from high-altitude balloons; Google Poly, a 3-D content platform; and the game-development studio of Stadia, have been chopped. Google Cloud Platform remains one of the most prominent exceptions. Pichai and Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat reaffirmed their steadfast support of the business when Alphabet reported earnings Tuesday. Among the surprises in the report was that Google Cloud lost $1.24 billion in the last three months of 2020. To put that in perspective, that's more money than Alphabet lost from its moonshot "Other Bets" projects, including Waymo's driverless cars, Wing's delivery drones and Loon's aforementioned balloons. Of course, the opportunity for Google Cloud is more tangible than those other bets. It brought in $3.8 billion in revenue last quarter and continues to grow at a rapid clip. Multiyear cloud deals are often front-loaded with expenses, too, so as time passes, profitability should emerge. And there's good reason for Pichai and Porat to continually express their support for the cloud business. If there was even a hint that Google wasn't fully committed to seeing GCP through, it would likely be a death knell for convincing cautious enterprise clients to sign up. —Nico Grant | 
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