Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a successful public cloud platform that offers a variety of services including Simple Storage Service (S3) for file storage, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for virtual servers, Simple Queue Service (SQS) for messaging, SimpleDB for database storage, and CloudFront for content delivery. Developers can access these services through APIs, SDKs, and a management console to build and host applications on AWS infrastructure with benefits like scalability, availability, and pay-as-you-go pricing.