“We expect the quarterly impact of this change to decrease throughout the year.”

In context

“ng in areas like sponsored ads, streaming video and measurement. Of course, advertising only works so we make it useful for Amazon customers when we create great customer experiences, we deliver better outcomes for brands. Second, we’re prospectively updating the useful life of our servers and networking equipment, beginning in January. As a practice, we monitor and review the useful lives of our depreciable assets on a regular basis to make sure that our financial statements reflect our best estimate of how long the assets are going to be used in operations. We are increasing the useful life for servers from four years to five years and network equipment from five years to six years. As a result, our first quarter guidance includes an approximate $1 billion of lower depreciation expense. We expect the quarterly impact of this change to decrease throughout the year. Although we’re calling out an accounting change here, this really reflects a tremendous team effort by AWS to make our server and network equipment last longer. We’ve been operating at scale for over 15 years, and we continue to refine our software to run more efficiently on the hardware. This then lowers stress on the hardware and extends the useful life, both for the assets that we use to support AWS’ external customers as well as those used to support our own internal Amazon businesses. And finally, we will increase the price of Prime in the United States in Q1. We continue to make Prime better. In recent years, we’ve added more product selection available with fast free unlimited shipping, more exclusive deals and discounts, and more high-quality entertainment, including TV, movies, m”