d books from its online site. It later diversified into electronics, home goods, clothing, and many other areas. Many of these products are offered by third-party retailers who offer products on Amazon's site in exchange for a share of Amazon's revenue. In addition to its United States-based web site, it has online stores in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Its sites in China and the United Kingdom grew out of acquisitions of online sites in those two countries. Nontraditional Competitors: Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix Amazon leveraged its data center expertise and infrastructure to create its cloud computing services, Amazon Web Services. It also offers small and midsize companies access to its data center technology for developing and testing software applications. Amazon created the first large-scale cloud computing platform that it offers to residen- tial as well as business customers. In conjunction with its cloud offerings, Amazon also sells music and video stor- age, in direct competition with Apple and Microsoft. It has branched out to a subscrip- tion service with a low annual fee that provides access to free streaming from its library of 5,000 DVDs. For an additional fee, Amazon also offers short-term video rentals that can be ordered online. Another major innovation was Amazon's introduction of its Kindle e-reader. Kin- dle has had a major impact on publishing and the way people purchase books. Custom- ers now purchase more electronic books than printed books from Amazon. Like Apple devices, the Kindle is based on a proprietary format (.mobi). Only books in a compat- ible format can be downloaded to the Kindle. Sales of online e-books benefit Amazon in two ways: It saves money on mailing and warehouse expenses, and Kindle owners are locked into purchasing e-books from Amazon. With the introduction in 2011 of its low-priced tablet computer, the Kindle Fire, Amazon has the potential to attract many more Kindle Fire consumers to its video streaming, as well. A