Amazon owns the cloud platform Amazon Web Services, commonly called AWS.
AWS began offering services to outside customers in 2006, building on infrastructure Amazon had developed for its online retail operations. It provides computing power, storage, databases, networking, analytics, and other services on demand.
Amazon Web Services is a business division of Amazon, not a separate publicly traded company. AWS has become one of Amazon’s most important sources of operating income, even though Amazon is also known for its retail stores, logistics network, advertising business, and Prime subscription.
Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are major competitors. A common mistake is to treat AWS as Amazon’s stock-market name; Amazon’s public company trades under the ticker AMZN.