On March 14, 2026, Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) turned 20 years old. What started in 2006 as a simple object store is now considered the service that defined cloud computing as a concept.
The Beginnings
S3 launched on March 14, 2006 -- after Gmail (2004), but before the iPhone (2007), before Dropbox (2008), and before the term "cloud computing" in its current meaning. The idea: storage as a service, pay-per-use, via API. No own server needed.
20 Years Later
According to the AWS Blog, as of March 2026, S3 stores more data than any other service worldwide. Amazon does not publish the exact number, but the order of magnitude is in exabytes. S3 is the foundation for millions of applications -- from Netflix streaming to machine learning training to backup systems.
What S3 Changed
Before S3, startups had to buy their own servers to store data. The capital costs were a barrier to entry. S3 eliminated this barrier: storage became a variable cost item. This enabled a generation of startups that could scale without owning hardware.
At the same time, S3 created a new dependency. When S3 goes down -- as happened in 2017 and 2020 -- a significant portion of the internet goes down with it. And when S3 data centers are physically attacked, as is currently happening in the Gulf region, an infrastructure dependency becomes a geopolitical risk.
Source: AWS Blog (16.03.2026), "AWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon S3 turns 20".