Amazon has spent over ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing a world-class web service that millions of customers use every day. As a developer, you can build Amazon Associates Web Service applications that leverage this robust, scalable, and reliable technology. You get access to much of the data that is used by Amazon, including the items for sale, customer reviews, seller reviews, as well as most of the functionality that you see on www.amazon.com, such as finding items, finding similar items, displaying customer reviews, and product promotions. In short, Amazon Associates Web Service operations open the doors to Amazon's databases so that you can take advantage of Amazon's sophisticated e-commerce data and functionality. Build your own web store to sell Amazon items or your own items.