A service in Android runs in the background without a user interface. It can be started and stopped to perform long-running operations like playing audio. A service is not a separate process or a thread but allows work to be done in the background even when the user is not interacting with the app. The document provides an example service app that runs a background service displaying a notification every 5 seconds until stopped. It demonstrates starting and stopping the service from an activity and handling the service lifecycle through onCreate(), onStart(), and onDestroy() methods.