Amazon is the parent company of Amazon.com and Amazon Web Services, commonly known as AWS.
Amazon began as an online bookstore in 1994 and expanded into a broad commerce platform selling products in many categories. AWS later became a major cloud-computing business, providing computing power, storage, databases, and other services to companies and governments.
The combination of online retail, cloud infrastructure, advertising, subscriptions, and logistics makes Amazon much more than an internet shop. AWS has been especially important to Amazon’s profitability and to its position among the world’s largest companies by market capitalization.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Its market value is based on the publicly traded corporation, not just the retail website. The company’s stock trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol AMZN.