Amazon owns the cloud-computing business Amazon Web Services. AWS is a subsidiary and business segment of Amazon that provides computing, storage, databases, networking, and other technology services over the internet.
Amazon launched AWS services in the mid-2000s after developing infrastructure to support its own retail operations. The business allowed outside organizations to rent computing capacity instead of buying and maintaining all their own servers.
AWS is often compared with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, which are operated by Microsoft and Alphabet respectively. These brands are competitors, not alternate owners of AWS. Amazon’s retail website and AWS therefore belong to the same parent company even though they serve very different markets.
AWS became a major contributor to Amazon’s profitability and an important reason investors value Amazon beyond its online-store operations. Its financial results are reported within Amazon’s corporate structure.