Amazon owns the cloud-computing platform Amazon Web Services, commonly known as AWS.
AWS began offering services publicly in 2006 and became one of Amazon’s most important business divisions. It provides computing power, storage, databases, networking, machine-learning tools, and other services to companies, governments, and developers.
Amazon started as an online bookstore founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. The company expanded into general e-commerce, logistics, digital entertainment, devices, advertising, and cloud computing. That diversification helped make Amazon one of the world’s most valuable publicly traded companies.
A common mix-up is treating AWS as a separate listed company. It is a business segment of Amazon, so its performance contributes to Amazon’s consolidated results and valuation. Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are major competitors.