Amazon is the online retailer founded by Jeff Bezos that expanded into cloud computing through Amazon Web Services.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in Bellevue, Washington, in 1994, and the company began as an online bookstore. Its website opened to customers in July 1995. Amazon later broadened its catalogue to include almost every major retail category, while also developing devices, entertainment services, logistics, and advertising.
Amazon Web Services, commonly called AWS, launched in 2006. It provides computing power, storage, databases, networking, and other services that organizations rent over the internet. AWS became a major part of Amazon’s business and helped popularize the modern cloud-computing model.
Amazon’s name is sometimes mistaken for being connected to the Amazon rainforest. Bezos selected it as a reference to the Amazon River, intending to suggest great scale. The company is also distinct from Amazon Web Services: AWS is a business segment of Amazon, not a separate parent corporation.