Amazon owns Amazon Web Services, commonly abbreviated AWS.
AWS began offering services to outside customers in 2006. It provides on-demand computing power, storage, databases, networking, machine learning, and other cloud tools. The business grew from infrastructure that Amazon had developed to support its own online retail operations.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and began as an online bookseller. It expanded into a broad marketplace, logistics, devices, digital entertainment, advertising, and cloud computing. AWS became one of the company’s most important businesses and a major contributor to operating income.
AWS is often compared with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud because all three provide cloud infrastructure. They are different from Amazon’s retail website, although both belong to the same parent company. Amazon’s market capitalization therefore represents investors’ valuation of a diversified group rather than only its e-commerce operations.