Amazon.com is adding a new tool to its suite of web services -- one designed to expand its customer base beyond startups to academic researchers, scientists and biotechnology companies.

The online retailer this morning rolled out Public Data Sets, which lets users integrate large cumbersome chunks of information like U.S. Census data and human genome data into Amazon's existing cloud-computing services.

The data are all publicly available, but Amazon says such data previously "required many hours to locate, download and customize." The company says the data can now access and starting working with the data within minutes.

Amazon is hosting the data for free.

The data offerings also include 3-D chemical structures provided by Indiana University. Amazon also plans to add economic statistics from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The genome data is and an annotated form of the human genome from a company called Ensembl.

The genome angle could be an interesting one given the growth of bioinformatics in recent years, a field that combines biotechnology with computational analysis.

While web startups were early adopters of Amazon Web Services such as storage and computing, Amazon is clearly making a bid to draw in other types of customers beyond traditional web developers.

One big question for Amazon will be whether it can attract large corporate customers as well.

TechCrunch notes that at least one other company, San Francisco-based Swivel, is helping people tap into large data sets.