Amazon

Amazon Prime at $139/year ($14.99/month) is worth it for most households that order from Amazon at least 1-2 times per month. The core value is free two-day shipping on millions of items. Additional included benefits — Prime Video (with originals like The Boys, Rings of Power), Prime Music (100M+ songs), Prime Reading, Prime Gaming, and exclusive deals — add significant value. For a single person spending $50+/month on Amazon orders, Prime typically pays for itself in shipping savings alone.

Amazon is better for: selection (hundreds of millions of products), tech/electronics, Prime 2-day shipping, Prime Video bundled, and sellers without physical stores. Walmart is better for: groceries and everyday household items (typically lower prices), fresh produce and perishables, same-day pickup via existing stores, and avoiding Amazon marketplace seller issues. For most households, both are useful — Walmart for groceries and consumables, Amazon for electronics, specialty items, and anything where selection matters.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon's cloud computing division that provides on-demand computing infrastructure and services to businesses, governments, and developers. AWS offers 200+ services including EC2 (virtual servers), S3 (storage), RDS (databases), Lambda (serverless), and SageMaker (machine learning). AWS generated $107 billion in revenue in 2024 and holds 31% of the global cloud market. Notable AWS customers include Netflix, NASA, Airbnb, and the US government.