A strong second-quarter earnings report from Amazon.com Thursday included another impressive set of growth and profitability numbers from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

For its second quarter, which ended June 30, AWS' revenues were $1.82 billion, up 16 percent from the previous quarter's $1.57 billion and up 81 percent from the second quarter a year ago.

AWS again proved crucial to Amazon's overall profitability. AWS' operating income was $391 million, compared with Amazon's operating income of $464 million for the quarter. Last year, AWS' second-quarter operating income was $77 million.

With two full quarters of AWS numbers available, it's now hard to deny that AWS is not only profitable but growing in a big way. "We continue to see really strong growth that's outpacing the revenue growth of 81 percent," CFO Brian Olsavsky said on Thursday's earnings call.

Naturally, AWS wants to take advantage of its hot streak by expanding internationally. Amazon has already announced plans to open an AWS data center in India in 2016.

"When we see a positive surprise, we double down on it. That's kind of our policy, and India is that kind of surprise," Olsavsky said.

None of this means the competition has given up, obviously. Olsavsky noted peripherally that at this time last year, AWS was grappling with a price war among the major public-cloud players. While that war isn't as frantic as it was last year, it's also not over — Google, in particular, cut prices in May.

At the same time, Google has been trying to open a front to compete on features. Along those lines, and maybe not coincidentally, Google Cloud Platform added a new feature today: Google Cloud Storage Nearline, which bears at least a passing resemblance to the Amazon Glacier backup-storage offering.

Overall, Amazon reported revenues of $23.2 billion and net income of $92 million, or 19 cents per share. For the second quarter a year ago, Amazon reported revenues of $19.3 billion and a net loss of $126 million, or 27 cents per share.

Amazon expects third-quarter revenues of $23.3 billion to $25.5 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 13 to 24 percent. Net income could range from a loss of $480 million to a profit of $70 million, figures that include $580 million in charges for stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets.

Amazon shares were up $81.82 (17%) at $564 in early after-hours trading.