Amazon Web Services (AWS) posted another strong quarter of financial growth and continues to be the cloud market’s 800-pound gorilla, however that growth continues to stagnate to the benefit of its smaller rivals like Microsoft and Google.

AWS’ net sales surged 29% to $11.6 billion in the quarter. That was level with the 29% growth it reported the previous quarter, though down from the 35% growth it posted for the third-quarter of 2019.

While revenue growth was flat, operating income increased 56% year over year to $3.5 billion.

Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky told investors that the company’s cloud results were indeed “a mixed bag right now.” He seemingly acknowledged that while segment growth was stagnating, the latest quarter was its biggest year-over-year outright financial increase.

“We're very happy with the cloud performance and we're seeing a lot of customers who are now moving to the cloud at a faster pace,” Olsavsky said during Amazon’s earnings call with investors, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. “There's anomalies in different industries going on this year, things like travel and hospitality are down. A lot of companies are in holding pattern … and some are doing really well, things like video conferencing, and gaming, and remote learning, and things tied to entertainment.”

The exec added that AWS’ “backlog of multi-year deals has gone up quite a bit.”

Analysts had a similar guarded optimism on AWS’ results.

Martin Garner, COO at CCS Insight, noted in a report that AWS had indeed maintained “its healthy growth rate” despite broader uncertainty.

“Amazon Web Services had a strong quarter, as the largest of the cloud players, maintaining its healthy growth rate from Q2,” Garner wrote. “While overall demand for cloud services is increasing and more companies are moving their work to the cloud, some existing customer sectors – such as travel – are experiencing dire conditions and are having to cut their cloud spending.”

That healthy growth rate, though, was not as healthy as numbers posted by AWS’ smaller rivals.

Google’s cloud business, which includes Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), grew 45% year over year and pulled in $3.44 billion during the latest quarter, compared to $2.38 billion a year ago. That growth surpassed the 43% year-over-year increase it posted for Q2.

Microsoft said its Azure public cloud grew 48% year over year during its most recent quarter, which was also up slightly from the 47% year-over-year growth rate it posted in Q2.

Despite the lower overall growth, research firm Canalys said AWS managed to increase its market dominance. It reported that AWS commanded 32% of the $36.5 billion global cloud market in Q3, and that it “generated more revenue than the next three largest cloud service providers combined.”