Amazon to raise price of Prime

SEATTLE — Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, long ago figured out how to keep Amazon’s sales figures shooting skyward. Now he is doing the same with profit.

The company said its net income for the first quarter more than doubled. Although Amazon is best known as an internet shopping destination, its cloud computing and advertising businesses were big contributors to the jump in profit.

Bezos singled out the performance of the company’s cloud computing business — known as Amazon Web Services, or AWS — referring in a statement to a “remarkable acceleration” in growth in the segment for a second consecutive quarter.

Amazon said it was raising the price of its Prime membership service 20 percent, to $119 from $99. Prime memberships include two-day shipping at no extra cost, a video-streaming service and other benefits.

— From wire reports