Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a message queue service that allows applications to exchange messages asynchronously. It offers reliable and scalable hosted queues that allow components to communicate without being available at the same time. SQS provides advantages like asynchronicity, decoupling of applications, redundancy, and scalability. Some disadvantages are latency due to asynchronous processing and potential load issues if jobs take too long to process. Common uses of message queues include communicating with APIs, sending emails, and generating reports.