Amazon founded Amazon Web Services, the cloud-computing platform launched in 2006.
Amazon Web Services, commonly called AWS, began offering major infrastructure services in 2006, including Amazon Simple Storage Service and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. These products let customers rent storage and computing capacity rather than building all their own servers. AWS later expanded into databases, analytics, artificial intelligence, networking, and developer tools.
Amazon itself began as an online bookstore founded by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, in 1994. The company opened its website in 1995 and gradually expanded into electronics, household goods, media, logistics, advertising, and subscription services.
AWS is a division of Amazon, not a separate company that competes independently with it. Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are its major cloud rivals. Amazon’s retail business is therefore only one part of the corporation behind its large public-company valuation.