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$1.65 billion in profit last quarter. Their international retail sales is still losing money, but it's swamped out by their North American sales, which made nearly as much money as AWS last quarter ($2.03b vs $2.08b).

That's probably the rationale behind thinking AWS will be spun off. Normally you stick a money-making division together with a money-losing division. That allows you to take the money from the money-making division, and invest it into improving the money-losing division. That reduces your net income (profit), and thus your taxable income. Once both divisions start making money, there's no longer any reason to keep them together. You're better off finding new businesses projects to invest in which can act as a money sink.

Exactly. Amazon even addressed Bernie's criticisms, but it wasn't mentioned at all in this story. Seems like very 1-sided reporting.