Amazon Web Services, long the cloud-computing market leader, edged past Wall Street estimates for June-quarter revenue on Thursday with a 17.5 per cent increase, but it widely lagged the 39 per cent growth seen at Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud’s 32 per cent gain.

Amazon.com ( AMZN-Q) shares dropped nearly 8 per cent before the bell on Friday, after growth in its cloud computing unit failed to impress investors, in contrast to the robust gains reported by AI-focused rivals Alphabet ( GOOGL-Q) and Microsoft ( MSFT-Q ).