Amazon launched Amazon Web Services in 2006, helping create the modern cloud-computing market.
AWS began with services such as Amazon Simple Storage Service and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. These products let businesses rent storage and computing capacity over the internet instead of purchasing and maintaining all of their own servers.
Amazon had developed large-scale internal infrastructure to support its retail operation. The company turned that technical capability into a commercial platform, and AWS became a major business serving startups, governments, universities, and large corporations.
Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are major competitors, but Amazon’s earlier public cloud services gave AWS a first-mover advantage. Amazon remains both a global retailer and a large technology-services provider, which is why its market value is not based on online shopping alone.