Amazon, the Biggest R&D Spender, Does Not Believe in R&D

In a series of letters that it sent to Amazon.com Inc. executives during the fall and winter and released to the public last week,1523378982062 the Securities and Exchange Commission urged the Seattle-based e-commerce and cloud computing giant to disclose its research and development spending as other companies do. It seemed like a reasonable enough request -- especially given that, as I discussed in a recent column, Amazon now appears to lead the global list of corporate R&D spenders by a multi-billion-dollar margin:

To arrive at that $22.6 billion in 2017 R&D spending by Amazon, I had to assume (as pretty much everyone tracking corporate R&D spending does) that the line item for "technology and content" on Amazon's earnings statement is equivalent to R&D. Is it? Here's how Amazon described technology and content in its most recent annual report: