By Greg Bensinger, Deborah Mary Sophia (Reuters) -Amazon.com investors drove shares down sharply on Thursday due to weakness in the retailer's cloud computing unit and lower-than-expected forecasts for first-quarter revenue and profit.

Key Takeaways Amazon shares lost ground in extended trading on Thursday after the tech giant reported cloud computing revenue below expectations and issued a tepid current quarter outlook.The stock's projected open on Friday sets the stage for a possible retest of a rising wedge pattern's lower trendline.

AWS has not been able to match the growth of Amazon’s competitors, with Microsoft Corp.’s Azure and Alphabet Inc.’s Google Cloud seeing cloud-related revenue rise by 31% and 30%, respectively. Even so, AWS remains much bigger than any other cloud infrastructure provider, and it’s notable that those peers also missed expectations this week.