Cloud computing refers to accessing and manipulating hardware and software resources over the internet. The concept originated in the 1960s with John McCarthy's idea of computing as a public utility. Main developments include time-sharing systems in the 1950s, ARPANET in the 1960s-1970s, and virtualization technologies in the 1960s-1990s. Amazon launched cloud services like EC2 and S3 in 2002-2006, making cloud computing commercially available. Major tech companies like Google and Microsoft then entered the market in the late 2000s, helping cloud computing become mainstream.