What is AWS, and why is it so popular?

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's largest public cloud platform, offering over 240 services across compute, storage, databases, networking, AI, and security on a pay-as-you-go model. Breadth of services — from EC2 (virtual servers) and S3 (object storage) to managed AI (Bedrock, SageMaker) and fully serverless platforms (Lambda, Fargate). Global reach — 33+ Regions and 100+ Availability Zones in 2026, plus 600+ CloudFront edge locations, enabling low-latency global apps. Pay-as-you-go pricing — no upfront capex, with discounts via Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and Spot for elastic workloads. Mature security & compliance — SOC 2, HIPAA, FedRAMP, PCI-DSS out of the box via the Shared Responsibility Model. First-mover ecosystem — launched 2006; deepest set of tooling, integrations, and a marketplace of partner solutions. Why popular: AWS combines scale, breadth, and reliability that lets startups and Fortune 500s ship faster without managing data centers. Lead with breadth + scale + pay-as-you-go. Drop one number — 33+ Regions or 240+ services — to sound current. Mention the Shared Responsibility Model and you separate yourself from juniors.