Amazon began as an online bookstore and became a global cloud-computing leader.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, and the company opened its website to customers in 1995. Books were an efficient starting category because a digital store could offer far more titles than a typical physical shop.
Amazon later expanded into electronics, household goods, groceries, entertainment, devices, logistics, and business services. Amazon Web Services, launched in 2006, provides computing, storage, databases, and other infrastructure to organizations around the world.
The company is often associated mainly with online retail, but that is only part of its business. AWS is especially important to Amazon's corporate identity and financial profile. Amazon's growth from retailer to technology and logistics conglomerate helped make it one of the world's highest-market-cap companies.