Amazon operates AWS, the cloud-computing service that helped make Amazon one of the world’s largest companies by market capitalization.
Amazon Web Services launched publicly in 2006 with infrastructure services that allowed businesses and developers to rent computing power, storage, and other technology over the internet. This model reduced the need for customers to build and maintain all their own data centers.
Amazon began as an online bookstore in 1994 before expanding into a broad retail marketplace, logistics, digital entertainment, devices, and cloud services. AWS became a major source of operating profit and an important reason investors value Amazon as more than a traditional retailer.
AWS is often compared with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Those services compete directly, but AWS was an early large-scale leader in commercial cloud infrastructure.