17 ms·

Amazon Prime Members’ Newest Benefit Is Free, Unlimited Photo Storage

197 points by nikunjk 12y ago

gushie 12y ago
Unless Amazon are now giving away Prime for free, it isn't free.
- benguild 12y ago
  But it’s basically free considering that we all pay for Prime anyway. :)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - glibgil 12y ago
      Yes.
  - Justsignedup 12y ago
    ... I don't... walks into a corner
    - rev_bird 12y ago
      Hey, check this guy out! He waits 5 business days for packages!
    - city41 12y ago
      I don't either. Although Prime is getting to the tipping point for me. Before I didn't order enough packages or watch enough tv for it to be worth it.
  - smackfu 12y ago
    The problem comes when they raise the price because of all the "added value". And I just want the "free" shipping.
  - adolph 12y ago
    It's a value add to make it feel better when you realize the Prime price is often the price + shipping.
- dingaling 12y ago
  Prime is reaching a primarily-digital-services point that I half-expect them to split-off the free-shipping 'benefit' into another package, or quietly drop it. Actually I wish they would, so that I could check-out physical orders twice as fast without the tedium of deselecting the defaulted 'Yes give me the 30-day Prime trial!' checkboxes. It is quite odious how much upselling they now load into the checkout process.
VLM 12y ago
I smell a bubble in online photo storage. Every pic I take gets uploaded to G+, Facebook, Dropbox, and apparently now Amazon. Aside from the pure storage bubble, I know Amazon is pretty good at shipping, so being able to frame and airmail photographs of the kids to Grandma with free 2-day prime shipping sounds appealing compared to the 50 other competitors in the market with less legendary logistics stills. Take a pix of the kids on the 22nd of december and amazon could probably guarantee grandma would have framed copies delivered before christmas. I could see it.
- eitally 12y ago
  To add one additional bit of supporting evidence, Snapfish (owned by HP) is currently offering a promotion for users of their mobile app (iOS & Android): 100 free prints per month for a year. Yes, 1200 free prints, all from your phone or tablet, as long as you store them at Snapfish. http://www.snapfish.com/snapfish/storepage/storePageId=page-mobile-print-app http://www.snapfish.com/snapfish/storepage/storePageId=page-...
  - greeneggs 12y ago
    Only $0.99/print shipping, what a deal. http://www.snapfish.com/snapfish/helppricing http://www.snapfish.com/snapfish/helppricing
- k2enemy 12y ago
  > I smell a bubble in online photo storage. Every pic I take gets uploaded to G+, Facebook, Dropbox, and apparently now Amazon. I know what you mean. Lately I've gotten the impression that companies aren't offering photo storage as a feature to entice more people to use their services, but that they want our photos for some reason. Maybe advances in image recognition let them use the photos to mine marketable data?
  - general_failure 12y ago
    Things like geo data, people, dresses can all be detected and used to suggest various products.
thedangler 12y ago
Canada or only US Prime subscribers.
- teamonkey 12y ago
  I even checked, fully knowing what the answer was going to be.
- acangiano 12y ago
  There is no excuse for not offering this to Canadian Prime subscribers. We get absolutely nothing out of that subscription, but faster shipping. I will cancel my Prime membership out of principle if they don't give us this one.
- agilo 12y ago
  Only US Prime subscribers. We don't get digital benefits with our prime membership in Canada yet. Source: Contacted Amazon.ca
Someone1234 12y ago
Legitimate question: I wonder what their definition of a "photo" is? For example do they support RAW files? Or is it only JPG/PNG? On that subject I wonder if even BMP is supported.
- sib 12y ago
  It's actually somewhat unclear. They say that they support ".raw" files, but that suffix is only used for raw files from Kyocera Contax and Panasonic cameras. They specifically don't list .NEF (Nikon), .CR2 / .CRW (Canon), or .DNG (the "standardized" raw file format). http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201634590 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
- cicloid 12y ago
  I wonder what the definition of "unlimited" is?
  - uniformlyrandom 12y ago
    That should be quite simple to test. Just generate a bunch of random images and start uploading. Let us know when they ban you, and declare you the enemy of the state.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- alexgaribay 12y ago
  For photos: .bmp .gif .jpeg .jpg .png .raw .tif .tiff For videos: .mp4 (including mov, 3gp, m4v) .avi (including divx) .mts (mpeg transport stream) .mpg (mpeg program stream) .asf/.wmv .flv .ogg The restrictions can be found at http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201634590 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
  - knd775 12y ago
MrSlo 12y ago
And a couple of days ago Microsoft announced that Office 365 subscribers gets unlimited OneDrive storage (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8517475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8517475). Which also can upload all your photos...
- NicoJuicy 12y ago
  And Dropbox receives Microsoft Office integration....
- Chevalier 12y ago
  I just wish OneDrive worked. I tried uploading 60k photos or so (less than 100GB)... OneDrive wouldn't even START the upload, and choked at 0.0kb uploaded. And even if it had started, OneDrive has a ridiculously low 20k file limit. I don't know why Microsoft has these weird bugs when everyone else seems to have it together. With OneDrive and Amazon offering unlimited storage, it can't be long until Google and Dropbox (whose clients actually work) offer the same. But Google had better step up soon. I really don't see why I should continue to pay for GDrive when Amazon bundles unlimited storage with my already-essential Prime membership.
benguild 12y ago
Is RAW supported?
- rickyc091 12y ago
  Yep, it's supported, but it's not necessarily easy to upload the files. You can only use a mobile app or the web interface to drag and drop files...
  - rrreese 12y ago
    Is that true? Visiting the site [0] there is a sections that says: Desktop - Install the Cloud Drive application for PC to add photos from your computer. Download for PC. It does warn though that: We're currently working on a Cloud Drive application for Mac. [0]https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos
  - christoph 12y ago
    This was going to be my question. It says it supports .RAW, but does that mean it supports RAW files in general (i.e. CR2, ARW, NEF, etc.)? If so, this is a huge thing for me. I've been looking for somewhere to back up 2TB of RAW files for a long time, but there's nothing out there that's affordable/trustworthy enough that i've found.
    - amalag 12y ago
      I was going to buy this: https://www.zoolz.com/Zoolz_Home https://www.zoolz.com/Zoolz_Home but if Amazon can support .DNG files it is easier.
  - benguild 12y ago
    Would be curious to hear if they're using some sort of authentication for the client (ie. private key) as a way to bottleneck that. Would suck to have to relay everything through a smartphone for now... but there's always a better way.
    - 12y ago
berberous 12y ago
Awesome. I have no interest in using this, but the more pressure on Apple / Dropbox to up their storage quotas, the better.
- rev_bird 12y ago
  Honestly, I'd rather Dropbox keep its 1TB plan and make it cheaper. I pay $9.99 a month for it and use it pretty much only for photo storage; it will be years before I fill it up even halfway.
  - TorKlingberg 12y ago
    Dropbox would lose money on you if you used the whole TB. The whole business plan replies on people not using their whole quotas.
  - jkmcf 12y ago
    Just don't delete any local files because they don't remain in Dropbox. Crashplan will keep locally deleted files forever. Backblaze only keeps them for 30 days, and Dropbox removes them immediately (you can access them for 30 days via deleted file history, 1yr if you pony up more cash, but the business plan keeps them indefinitely) I agree with wanting the 1TB option to be cheaper, but I'm finding fewer uses for Dropbox unless I switch to the business plan, which doesn't make sense. However for a family, you get 5 users for 15/mo and unlimited space. I'm still trying to figure out the downside to the business plan.
- leejoramo 12y ago
  I want to see pressure to provide a better photo service. (API's, organizational tools, sharing, privacy controls,etc) All we are getting is a race to the bottom and worse services.
  - heelhook 12y ago
    You might be interested in Smugmug. They hit all of those and have a simple and affordable pricing model. $40/yr unlimited storage. No gimmicks. Really good privacy controls.
Justsignedup 12y ago
TBH I just tried it out, not as useful as previously thought. $8.25 a month to get unlimited photo storage. It does not, however, give you ability to share albums, just individual files. Which makes it meh, since I can't share entire albums with people, which is what I'd want to do if I upload all my photos.
- darkstar999 12y ago
  > $8.25 a month Or "free" if you already had Prime. I can't see anyone signing up for it just for this new service.
amelius 12y ago
I just hope they don't make this public by default. I once made a wish-list on amazon, and it turned out to be public without me knowing it :S
- geekam 12y ago
  I had the same experience and I hated it. Although, a friend sent a book to me from that list on my birthday but overall it is a disconcerting experience.
baldfat 12y ago
CrashPlan+ for less then $5 a month unlimited backup. Also it runs on my Linux server and I can have all my computers and family computers backup to the linux machine for free then the Linux box is backed up.
- general_failure 12y ago
  Does CrashPlan+ have a mobile app to auto upload photos and such?
  - rickyc091 12y ago
    Nope, their mobile app is used as a file manager for your backups. Crashplan has a desktop app that backs up your photos indefinitely though. It backups your external devices as well, been using them for years and I can't tell you how many times it's saved me.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  One problem with Crashplan is that it seems to be all-or-nothing. I've got it running on my desktop at home; I've got gigs and gigs of photos there. My macbook doesn't have enough free disk space to store all of them - and Crashplan doesn't let me store and sync just the 2014 photos.
  - elmuchoprez 12y ago
    Backblaze is $5/month (per machine) and let's you grab single files (or directories) from your backup if you want.
    - pavel_lishin 12y ago
      Does it do selective sync? e.g., HOME:/media/pictures contains folders for 2014...etc, and LAPTOP:/media/pictures/ only contains 2014, and any changes to LAPTOP:/media/pictures/2014/ get propagated to HOME:/media/pictures/2014 etc?
tsemple 12y ago
Unlike Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft, OneDrive doesn't seem to sync a folder on my PC. You have to manually drag files and folders to upload them. But free (I already have Prime) is a good price to backup my 500GB of photos.
- Fastidious 12y ago
  Are you saying that the Amazon Cloud Drive client is allowing to access files on the cloud, that are not synchronized to your machine? If that is the case, this is a first, and it is great to hear!
zoul 12y ago
What’s superbly dumb is that we can’t use the storage and the clients interchangeably. The storage is almost always tied to the clients. I so wish I could just start the photo app of my choice and simply pointed it to my single paid cloud storage with a standardized API, be it from Google, Apple, Amazon or DropBox.
- diafygi 12y ago
  There are several JavaScript projects that aim to let you connect your own storage from a varity of locations. They are still pretty early on in development, though. 1. http://remotestorage.io/ http://remotestorage.io/ 2. http://cloud-rail.com/ http://cloud-rail.com/ 3. https://github.com/diafygi/byoFS https://github.com/diafygi/byoFS Disclosure: I maintain byoFS.
- tOkeshu 12y ago
  Well it's called Remote Storage [1] but I guess we can't expect companies like Google, Apple, Amazon or DropBox to actually embrace that, isnt it? [1] http://remotestorage.io/ http://remotestorage.io/
- ghaff 12y ago
  It's not a standardized API but you can use Lightroom plug-ins such as jfriedl's to "publish" to a variety of different sites. That said, this approach is more oriented toward uploading a curated and edited subset than your photos in bulk. On that topic, I suppose that I'm going to have to think about how much curation I should do for the multimedia that I keep at all. I'm backing up about 1.5TB to cloud storage and that's at or over the limit of what I really have the network bandwidth to reasonably deal with. And I know that most of what's backed up could be easily deleted--but it would take time to do that curation.
- bengali3 12y ago
  I was considering going after this as well, as none of the cloud storage providers would build an intuitive app to offer multiple backends that let you move away from their own. A small budget for a v1 desktop & mobile app that gracefully removed all this fuzziness could disrupt this 'store your photos here!' war between giants, using their own cloud file storage products. However that's when the transfer rates become switching costs... But I do believe photo storage is worth a premium over file storage specifically: Photos are of family; Family is cherished; some people would run into burning buildings to save family photo albums... is now the time?
derengel 12y ago
Of one drive, idrive and google drive I stick with dropbox because of its CLI linux client, are there any alternatives to dropbox for this?
- cplease 12y ago
  http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/04/three-alternatives-ubuntu-one http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/04/three-alternatives-ubuntu... Copy looks promising. If you're willing to pay you use a service like rsync.net, or if you're willing to do a bit of setup you can just use any old shared hosting or VPS service. Or owncloud for some sugar.
  - rsync 12y ago
    rsync.net has a special new-customer discount for HN readers (and has for a long time). Just email and ask for it.
- mhd 12y ago
  Copy has a command line client, and it's available for both Intel and ARM.
simonsarris 12y ago
I'm super happy about this! I have been looking for a way to easily offsite backup my photos without adding another row in my "cost of being alive"[1] spreadsheet (which already contains Prime). I don't need to access them, it doesn't have to be fancy, I just want to keep them safe at a second location. [1] Add up all the monthly/yearly services you pay for so that if you did literally nothing at all, that's the amount you'd be charged per month. Things like github, prime, linode, gym, parking permit, ACM membership, etc. That's your cost to just be alive (before choosing to consume anything).
jaredmcdonald 12y ago
What happens if you drop your Prime membership?
- caublestone 12y ago
  While it doesn't appear to be easily done through the UI, I'm sure contacting Amazon support will get you all of your files back.
- otoburb 12y ago
  Great question for such an important lock-in mechanism. Perhaps a 30-day grace period? No media release so far that I can find references the conditions to keep data beyond the free 5GB Cloud Drive limit.
- rada 12y ago
  There is an option to "Download All Files".
  - agildehaus 12y ago
    Yes, but for how long? What if my credit card expires and I forget to update it? Is there a 30 day grace period for downloading them or are they wiped immediately?
mercwear 12y ago
I am trying to determine if this can be used for video storage as well. The documentation does not make that clear but it does state "rules" on video uploads in terms of length, file format and size.
- rada 12y ago
  The first thing that greeted me when I signed in (with my existing Prime membership) was an upload window titled "Drag photos and videos here".
  - mercwear 12y ago
    Me too. But they do not state that video storage is free, only photo storage.
    - sitkack 12y ago
      Isn't a video just a sequence of photos ?
      - mercwear 12y ago
        In a sense. But a video file also stores things like sound which is one of the things that make the file size larger.
    - kaybe 12y ago
      Adding .jpg/similar to the end of the filename normally allows you to store about anything small enough, I found. (I didn't check here though.)
bengali3 12y ago
one more way to lock in that recurring Prime revenue :)
- crazyjayd 12y ago
  I am actually ok with it. As a house hold, we have one prime account, then we do the prime family share. So now everyone has unlimited storage in the house. Nice.
  - bengali3 12y ago
    Interesting, I wasn't aware of the prime family share. thanks!
leejoramo 12y ago
Agree with Dave Winer on this: > Amazon talks about ways of accessing photos, but does not include an API, or even RSS. Why?? What a waste. https://twitter.com/davewiner/status/529637391951495168 https://twitter.com/davewiner/status/529637391951495168 I have looked at so many photo services and nothing is providing the tools or sustainable business plan that I am looking for.
- corobo 12y ago
  What are you looking for?
  - OmarIsmail 12y ago
    As a new dad living away from my family, here's what I want: 1. cheap storage. I'm willing to pay $5 for 100GB. 2. don't muck around with my pictures. I have a nice camera. 3. don't copy all of the pictures on my account to all my devices, I'm trying to free up storage, not consume it. 4. let me setup a slideshow on my TV easily. I have (multiple) game consoles hooked up (that have web browsers). I have a Chromecast. Music + pictures = instant emotional win! Just let me pick an album "start slideshow" and put on some cheesy music automatically. 5. Let me easily share albums with family/friends, and let them access the pictures easily Right now Picasa + Google Plus is the closest. The one thing is that there is no good way to get a slideshow going on my TV. This is actually a big deal to me. I have a Chromecast and all the major game consoles connected to my TV - and there's still no good solution. OneDrive on Xbox One gets pretty close for TV slideshows, but then I have to upload an album specifically to OneDrive - which actually isn't too bad. But it's still cumbersome to get a slideshow with music going and because Xbox One doesn't do background music I have 1/4 of the screen taken up: * load up music app * find something to fit the "mood" which is annoying to do on Xbox Music * go to one drive * navigate to album * start slideshow * snap xbox music
    - guelo 12y ago
      They just released Chromecast Backdrop, https://www.google.com/chromecast/backdrop/ https://www.google.com/chromecast/backdrop/
chuckcode 12y ago
Am I just being cynical when I think that all new free photo storage just means that automated image recognition software has gotten good enough that companies want to process all my images and target me better? Is this like gmail where they get to machine read all your emails or is this the type of cloud that is just storage?
- mliker 12y ago
  That is quite cynical. Perhaps they want to compete against Dropbox, Microsoft, and Google for users wanting storage.
  - krisdol 12y ago
    It already does, it's called Cloud Drive (and Zocalo). They might still end up snagging some users with this, but that doesn't take away from the possibility that they're using the info for advertising.
- 3JPLW 12y ago
  The terms of how they use the photos in the EULA seem rather reasonable at first glance: "We may use, access, and retain Your Files in order to provide the Service to you and enforce the terms of the Agreement, and you give us all permissions we need to do so. These permissions include, for example, the rights to copy Your Files for backup purposes, modify Your Files to enable access in different formats, use information about Your Files to organize them on your behalf, and access Your Files to provide technical support." BUT: then they tack on "Amazon respects your privacy and Your Files are subject to the Amazon.com Privacy Notice." In the Privacy Notice, they state that any information you give Amazon in any way may be used "for such purposes as responding to your requests, customizing future shopping for you, improving our stores…" Not sure how this interfaces with the Cloud EULA, but it seems to do the opposite of "respecting your privacy."
- uptown 12y ago
  I'd assume that's exactly what they'll do. They've already demonstrated that they have the technology: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-phone/docs/understanding-firefly https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-p...
shittyanalogy 12y ago
All I want is cheap shipping.
ericcholis 12y ago
It's unlikely that I'd use this as my only means of photo storage. I will, however, use it to supplement iCloud and Backblaze. Yes, there should be some underlying universal API for data storage like this. But, in the meantime, I feel that tying myself to a single provider might bite me in the ass.
egeozcan 12y ago
I'm not 100% sure and didn't test it through but it seems to work with an Amazon.de Prime membership as well[1]. Usually these services arrive later. [1]: http://i.imgur.com/s4NwAs1.png http://i.imgur.com/s4NwAs1.png edit: False alarm, seems to be limited to 10GB.
- 3JPLW 12y ago
  In the EULA, they note: "The Service is offered in the United States. We may restrict access from other locations."
davidw 12y ago
What happens when you let prime lapse or forget or whatever?
- uniformlyrandom 12y ago
  They charge you for the cloud storage?
- misaelm 12y ago
  From their help page: If you exceed the limit of your current storage plan, you won’t be able to upload additional content but you'll still be able to view, download and delete your files, photos, and personal videos for at least three months. During this time you can: ...Renew or sign-up for Amazon Prime to enjoy the Prime Photos benefit...
gutnor 12y ago
Seems like all the big storage provider are bundling up feature. Integration with all their product for Apple, Office 365 for Microsoft, now this for Amazon. I'm wondering if Dropbox has something in store ? Seems to me like they will need something soon to justify their premium prices.
- spindritf 12y ago
  They have a multiplatform client (including headless *nix) with a sync that actually works. Somehow no one else does.
  - gordon_freeman 12y ago
    I think the only great thing remains about Dropbox is their awesome sync. But think biggies like Google,MS,Apple,etc. will soon catch up with it with sync service on par with Dropbox. Dropbox will need to come up with something to justify its being.
talltofu 12y ago
I wonder how this impacts SmugMug that is hosted on AWS.
mikecarlton 12y ago
Flickr offers 1TB photo storage free (with ads, $50/year without adds). How many of us have > 1TB of photos? And they've got an api https://help.yahoo.com/kb/flickr/difference-free-free-flickr-sln8863.html https://help.yahoo.com/kb/flickr/difference-free-free-flickr...
- krisdol 12y ago
  That's awesome. Do they compress uploads? Can I upload RAW images?
  - vvvv 12y ago
    I think you need the pro version to download them back.
    - ValentineC 12y ago
      Flickr Pro was depreciated a few months back. All Flickr users are able to download their originals now!
  - ValentineC 12y ago
    Flickr isn't great for hardcore photographers with plenty of RAW images. They don't keep metadata and filenames of the originals, and you won't be able to upload RAW images.
    - ghaff 12y ago
      I'm reasonably hardcore and find Flickr Pro fine--but for sharing and otherwise having them available online. It only functions as a backup in a "very worst case scenario" sort of sense. I use BackBlaze to store my Raw images (in addition to local backups).
      - matwood 12y ago
        Same. I think Flickr is a good worst case scenario backup. I still need to back up all of my RAWs somewhere. I work with s3 all day and will likely just write some scripts to manage my RAWs by hand. So far, I've just been lazy.
legohead 12y ago
does Amazon have 2 factor auth? considering the recent iCloud debacle, this would seem like a smart move. I see MFA [1] for AWS accounts, but not sure if that rolls over to the regular login as well. [1] http://aws.amazon.com/iam/details/mfa/ http://aws.amazon.com/iam/details/mfa/
- zippergz 12y ago
  It does not.
- Chevalier 12y ago
  This is a really big deal. I had started uploading photos before I searched for two-factor authentication... and immediately stopped when I realized it's not available. You would have to be an idiot to upload your photos to a service with nothing more secure than a password. And Amazon is more than just photos -- it's addresses, credit cards, purchase histories, subscriptions... Amazon, offer TFA asap please!
EZ-E 12y ago
Is this really "unlimited" ? What happens if I script n VPS servers with 10Mbps upload speed to generate random images and upload them to the service continuously ?
- ghshephard 12y ago
  I think you know what happens.
arenaninja 12y ago
<rant> ...and still no Amazon Instant Video on android tablets, only phone. But now that DMA is on android I can stop waiting and say goodbye to Amazon </rant>
gordon_freeman 12y ago
Unlimited photo storage was long due IMO. I remember when Google launched Gmail with 1GB storage, they blew away all the competitors such as AOL,Yahoo,Hotmail. That was the great customer acquisition move by Google. I kept wondering why nobody came forward with unlimited cloud storage or specifically photo storage! Also speaking strictly about the services I tried -- -- started using free Dropbox with camera uploads and with all friends referrals increased upto 10 GBs which is ultimately not good enough when you auto-upload images from phone camera. -- Then started using Flickr with 1 TB which does not have desktop client for simple drag-and-drop. -- Inconveniently tried using Google Drive on-and-off but simply cumbersome. Seems as a Primer subscriber, I will find this service valuable for auto-camera upload.
- cbhl 12y ago
  Bitcasa was originally billed as unlimited cloud storage, but I believe they've moved to having really large tiers now instead.
- vidarh 12y ago
  > I kept wondering why nobody came forward with unlimited cloud storage or specifically photo storage! Gmail could do that because "nobody" stored much e-mail. They could be on the case that most people would acquire more archived e-mail at a rate low enough that storage costs would drop quickly enough to cover a large percentage of the growth. In the end it also wasn't all that big deal when it came to customer acquisition: The major competitors all followed after they realised that it wouldn't drive their costs up all that much. Pictures are different. They are already big. And everyone have lots of pictures. The main reason for signing up for cloud storage for pictures is that you have too many of them to store on your phone/tablet/other small devices, while for e-mail features, and network effects (all those people that knows your e-mail address) mattered far more than storage (consider that e.g. Yahoo charged to upgrade to 50MB or 100MB storage before Gmail, and almost nobody did - the free amount was sufficient for most users). This is viable for Amazon because Prime customers are highly valuable and 1) we pay, 2) retaining us is worth lots of money - I've been up to over 200 orders a year from Amazon some years, 3) Amazon by now has years of experience driving down the cost of image storage, 4) it helps as a way of driving customers to their Fire platform (e.g. photos and videos in the Amazon cloud account show up on the Fire TV)
kin 12y ago
It's interesting. I signed up for Prime just for shipping. Now, I'm getting all these services "free". Granted, Prime's price increases here and there. But, because it's "free", it's easy for me to want to use it. Eventually I'm going to be using so many Prime services that I'll never want to cancel it.
- wmeredith 12y ago
  I'm exactly the opposite. I signed up for Prime for free shipping. They keep bundling it with more and more crap that I don't use. And it's not "free", the price is rising. I'll cancel if this keeps up.
  - planetjones 12y ago
    Exactly - their tactics failed with me, as I cancelled my prime membership due to having Netflix already and not wanting to be force fed amazon's instant video for a hefty increase in the annual subscription price.
  - baldfat 12y ago
    $100 and Amazon is still losing money on shipping alone. I don't see any of this as a "waste." $150 and I would still save on shipping.
ihiram 12y ago
Small test. Uploaded 2 files from my mac. Output from shasum: bead69d062c53436f19b6577ec7b524b9aa54445 DSC_0010.JPG 83ade975de96b81d272642740e06480fbc1484e1 DSC_0010.NEF Downloaded each file from Amazon Prime Photos. Filenames preserved. Filesizes the same. Output from shasum: bead69d062c53436f19b6577ec7b524b9aa54445 DSC_0010.JPG 83ade975de96b81d272642740e06480fbc1484e1 DSC_0010.NEF Lock-in and missing features aside, preserving the binary data is pretty cool, and it's honestly the most important thing when picking a place to store photos (for me). The most annoying thing was it treated the NEF and JPG files separately, and showed pictures twice in the UI.
- swartkrans 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure Dropbox doesn't change the binary data. What service changes it?
  - LLWM 12y ago
    iCloud.
  - arenaninja 12y ago
    Some time ago someone posted that SkyDrive (now OneDrive) did
    - nickbarnwell 12y ago
      Disclaimer: MSFT-employed. It's OneDrive for Business (i.e. SharePoint) that sometimes modifies uploaded files. To the best of my knowledge, OneDrive Consumer (http://onedrive.com http://onedrive.com) operates no differently than `rsync` would.
      - killerpopiller 12y ago
        how/why?
        robododo 12y ago
swartkrans 12y ago
This is interesting, but the features aren't comparable to Dropbox and this is a sideshow for Amazon. I don't want to store my precious files at a place where storing files isn't the primary focus of their business.
- rscott 12y ago
  I think that Amazon AWS/S3 is significant reason to not call this a sideshow.
  - djcapelis 12y ago
    And glacier. I wonder if they've got a good way to guess how cold someone's photos are likely to be.
hashtree 12y ago
As a, hopefully useful to someone, aside you can use icloud shared photo streams for nearly unlimited storage of casual photos/videos. You are limited to 5000, per stream. You can have 100 streams total: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4858 http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4858 Be aware, there is some downsizing that occurs: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5902 http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5902 (see: `Which photo and video formats and sizes does iCloud Photo Sharing support?`) Works nicely to get the most of your iOS device storage, share with family, mild private social interactions (e.g. commenting), OSX integration (e.g. you can have one central repo for wallpapers for all devices), etc.
Fastidious 12y ago
Amazon Cloud Drive, is it similar to Dropbox, Google Drive and iCloud, in the way it synchronizes data?
blisterpeanuts 12y ago
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos (If you don't feel like visiting TechCrunch.) Just for the sake of argument, why rent when you can own? For $99 a year, you can buy a 2-TB external drive (Seagate's is $90 on Amazon at this time) and keep backing up your stuff to fresh hardware. If you plan on subscribing to Amazon Prime in perpetuity, great. But if you should change your mind, you have a pretty big downloading task ahead of you to get all these images and move them elsewhere. Of course, you do have them all safely backed up on at least two local devices, do you not? In which case, why pay extra for AMZN's service? I let Google+ back up my phone photos and videos because why not? It's convenient. But I still plug in the phone and pull the camera folder onto a hard drive periodically. There's also the privacy consideration. Now that we all know the NSA can take our data arbitrarily, secretly, and with impunity, do we really want a pictorial guide to our lives to be out there and available for them to peruse?
- bpodgursky 12y ago
  Having photos on my own external hard drive is an enormous liability. Even ignoring the risk of a fire / theft / loss (not to mention the hassle itself of backing them up locally), drives fail. > have a pretty big downloading task ahead of you to get all these images and move them elsewhere I would say instead you have an enormous uploading task ahead of you to move 2 Tb of photos from your HDD into the cloud somewhere. Plus, the main reason I have photos is to share them with other people. If I'm going to end up uploading them somewhere else, it's just easier. I know opinions differ on privacy, but I honestly could not care less who sees my vacation photos.
- guelo 12y ago
  The main advantages are: - the auto-backup apps on the different platforms - the web interface for online browsing and sharing. - not having to worry about hard drive failures.
- wdr1 12y ago
  > Just for the sake of argument, why rent when you can own? For $99 a year, you can buy a 2-TB external drive (Seagate's is $90 on Amazon at this time) and keep backing up your stuff to fresh hardware. I do this (home backups), but I also value having offsite backups. I don't see Prime photos as a reason to signup for Prime by itself, but hell, as a longtime Prime member who has signed up just for shipping, I'm obviously very happy with how they've continued to role out perks. I don't even plan to use Photos (OS X isn't supported yet, anyway), but I love the demonstration of their commitment to Prime members. More than anything, that's where I think things like this are valuable.
zyxley 12y ago
Does anyone know if this preserves Mac extended file attributes (which contain tags, etc)? Dropbox does, which is pretty nice.
Spooky23 12y ago
They jacked up the price of Amazon Prime significantly and play games with the shipping times compared to when the service first came out. Since most people probably subscribed in the 4th quarter. My guess is they've So just like politicians roll out the pork before Election Day, Amazon is giving us all sorts of wonderful things to keep Prime around into the new year. (Example: the TV stick that doesn't ship until mid January)
stealthlogic 12y ago
Brought to you free of charge by the NSA.
Corrado 12y ago
I wish this would integrate with Apple iPhoto or the upcoming Photos app. My goal is to have all my photos locally stored on my iMac so that I can create slideshows, burn CDs, edit photos, etc. but I also want them securely stored off-site. That's the best of both worlds.
uvexdme 12y ago
I had thousands of pics so I wrote an ugly but effective python script to copy all the jpg files recursively and rename them in one single folder to upload. feel free to check it out! https://github.com/zork3/copyandchangeJPG/tree/master https://github.com/zork3/copyandchangeJPG/tree/master
markpundmann 12y ago
I wonder how long it will be until amazon gets brought up for abusing their market power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_bundling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_bundling
s3r3nity 12y ago
I tend to like Onedrive's photo storage & management -- and since I have Office 365, it's unlimited as well. Good move on Amazon's part to compete - not sure how Dropbox and the like will keep up with this movement towards free unlimited storage.
warble 12y ago
Hmm. No way to work with the files directly, no organization tools, seems like just a pile of files which doesn't help me much. Maybe it's because I'm in linux and can't use their desktop client.
- warble 12y ago
  My bad, I didn't see that you can put things in folders at least.
PStamatiou 12y ago
Related RFS: Storage for Photographers http://paulstamatiou.com/storage-for-photographers/ http://paulstamatiou.com/storage-for-photographers/ This doesn't quite meet my needs yet without a decent Mac uploader client but I'll be keeping an eye on it. I have about a TB or so of RAWs and videos in Glacier right now.
nolite 12y ago
What happens to the photos when you stop paying for Prime?
PhasmaFelis 12y ago
So how long until someone figures out how to encode arbitrary binaries as a series of JPGs and implements a general-purpose, unlimited-size cloud drive on top of this?

197 points by nikunjk 12y ago

gushie 12y ago

Unless Amazon are now giving away Prime for free, it isn't free.

benguild 12y ago
But it’s basically free considering that we all pay for Prime anyway. :)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - glibgil 12y ago
    Yes.
- Justsignedup 12y ago
  ... I don't... walks into a corner
  - rev_bird 12y ago
    Hey, check this guy out! He waits 5 business days for packages!
  - city41 12y ago
    I don't either. Although Prime is getting to the tipping point for me. Before I didn't order enough packages or watch enough tv for it to be worth it.
- smackfu 12y ago
  The problem comes when they raise the price because of all the "added value". And I just want the "free" shipping.
- adolph 12y ago
  It's a value add to make it feel better when you realize the Prime price is often the price + shipping.
dingaling 12y ago
Prime is reaching a primarily-digital-services point that I half-expect them to split-off the free-shipping 'benefit' into another package, or quietly drop it. Actually I wish they would, so that I could check-out physical orders twice as fast without the tedium of deselecting the defaulted 'Yes give me the 30-day Prime trial!' checkboxes. It is quite odious how much upselling they now load into the checkout process.

VLM 12y ago

I smell a bubble in online photo storage. Every pic I take gets uploaded to G+, Facebook, Dropbox, and apparently now Amazon. Aside from the pure storage bubble, I know Amazon is pretty good at shipping, so being able to frame and airmail photographs of the kids to Grandma with free 2-day prime shipping sounds appealing compared to the 50 other competitors in the market with less legendary logistics stills. Take a pix of the kids on the 22nd of december and amazon could probably guarantee grandma would have framed copies delivered before christmas. I could see it.

eitally 12y ago
To add one additional bit of supporting evidence, Snapfish (owned by HP) is currently offering a promotion for users of their mobile app (iOS & Android): 100 free prints per month for a year. Yes, 1200 free prints, all from your phone or tablet, as long as you store them at Snapfish. http://www.snapfish.com/snapfish/storepage/storePageId=page-mobile-print-app http://www.snapfish.com/snapfish/storepage/storePageId=page-...
- greeneggs 12y ago
  Only $0.99/print shipping, what a deal. http://www.snapfish.com/snapfish/helppricing http://www.snapfish.com/snapfish/helppricing
k2enemy 12y ago
> I smell a bubble in online photo storage. Every pic I take gets uploaded to G+, Facebook, Dropbox, and apparently now Amazon. I know what you mean. Lately I've gotten the impression that companies aren't offering photo storage as a feature to entice more people to use their services, but that they want our photos for some reason. Maybe advances in image recognition let them use the photos to mine marketable data?
- general_failure 12y ago
  Things like geo data, people, dresses can all be detected and used to suggest various products.

thedangler 12y ago

Canada or only US Prime subscribers.

teamonkey 12y ago
I even checked, fully knowing what the answer was going to be.
acangiano 12y ago
There is no excuse for not offering this to Canadian Prime subscribers. We get absolutely nothing out of that subscription, but faster shipping. I will cancel my Prime membership out of principle if they don't give us this one.
agilo 12y ago
Only US Prime subscribers. We don't get digital benefits with our prime membership in Canada yet. Source: Contacted Amazon.ca

Someone1234 12y ago

Legitimate question: I wonder what their definition of a "photo" is? For example do they support RAW files? Or is it only JPG/PNG? On that subject I wonder if even BMP is supported.

sib 12y ago
It's actually somewhat unclear. They say that they support ".raw" files, but that suffix is only used for raw files from Kyocera Contax and Panasonic cameras. They specifically don't list .NEF (Nikon), .CR2 / .CRW (Canon), or .DNG (the "standardized" raw file format). http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201634590 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
cicloid 12y ago
I wonder what the definition of "unlimited" is?
- uniformlyrandom 12y ago
  That should be quite simple to test. Just generate a bunch of random images and start uploading. Let us know when they ban you, and declare you the enemy of the state.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
alexgaribay 12y ago
For photos: .bmp .gif .jpeg .jpg .png .raw .tif .tiff For videos: .mp4 (including mov, 3gp, m4v) .avi (including divx) .mts (mpeg transport stream) .mpg (mpeg program stream) .asf/.wmv .flv .ogg The restrictions can be found at http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201634590 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
- knd775 12y ago

MrSlo 12y ago

And a couple of days ago Microsoft announced that Office 365 subscribers gets unlimited OneDrive storage (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8517475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8517475). Which also can upload all your photos...

NicoJuicy 12y ago
And Dropbox receives Microsoft Office integration....
Chevalier 12y ago
I just wish OneDrive worked. I tried uploading 60k photos or so (less than 100GB)... OneDrive wouldn't even START the upload, and choked at 0.0kb uploaded. And even if it had started, OneDrive has a ridiculously low 20k file limit. I don't know why Microsoft has these weird bugs when everyone else seems to have it together. With OneDrive and Amazon offering unlimited storage, it can't be long until Google and Dropbox (whose clients actually work) offer the same. But Google had better step up soon. I really don't see why I should continue to pay for GDrive when Amazon bundles unlimited storage with my already-essential Prime membership.

benguild 12y ago

Is RAW supported?

rickyc091 12y ago
Yep, it's supported, but it's not necessarily easy to upload the files. You can only use a mobile app or the web interface to drag and drop files...
- rrreese 12y ago
  Is that true? Visiting the site [0] there is a sections that says: Desktop - Install the Cloud Drive application for PC to add photos from your computer. Download for PC. It does warn though that: We're currently working on a Cloud Drive application for Mac. [0]https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos
- christoph 12y ago
  This was going to be my question. It says it supports .RAW, but does that mean it supports RAW files in general (i.e. CR2, ARW, NEF, etc.)? If so, this is a huge thing for me. I've been looking for somewhere to back up 2TB of RAW files for a long time, but there's nothing out there that's affordable/trustworthy enough that i've found.
  - amalag 12y ago
    I was going to buy this: https://www.zoolz.com/Zoolz_Home https://www.zoolz.com/Zoolz_Home but if Amazon can support .DNG files it is easier.
- benguild 12y ago
  Would be curious to hear if they're using some sort of authentication for the client (ie. private key) as a way to bottleneck that. Would suck to have to relay everything through a smartphone for now... but there's always a better way.
  - 12y ago

berberous 12y ago

Awesome. I have no interest in using this, but the more pressure on Apple / Dropbox to up their storage quotas, the better.

rev_bird 12y ago
Honestly, I'd rather Dropbox keep its 1TB plan and make it cheaper. I pay $9.99 a month for it and use it pretty much only for photo storage; it will be years before I fill it up even halfway.
- TorKlingberg 12y ago
  Dropbox would lose money on you if you used the whole TB. The whole business plan replies on people not using their whole quotas.
- jkmcf 12y ago
  Just don't delete any local files because they don't remain in Dropbox. Crashplan will keep locally deleted files forever. Backblaze only keeps them for 30 days, and Dropbox removes them immediately (you can access them for 30 days via deleted file history, 1yr if you pony up more cash, but the business plan keeps them indefinitely) I agree with wanting the 1TB option to be cheaper, but I'm finding fewer uses for Dropbox unless I switch to the business plan, which doesn't make sense. However for a family, you get 5 users for 15/mo and unlimited space. I'm still trying to figure out the downside to the business plan.
leejoramo 12y ago
I want to see pressure to provide a better photo service. (API's, organizational tools, sharing, privacy controls,etc) All we are getting is a race to the bottom and worse services.
- heelhook 12y ago
  You might be interested in Smugmug. They hit all of those and have a simple and affordable pricing model. $40/yr unlimited storage. No gimmicks. Really good privacy controls.

Justsignedup 12y ago

TBH I just tried it out, not as useful as previously thought. $8.25 a month to get unlimited photo storage. It does not, however, give you ability to share albums, just individual files. Which makes it meh, since I can't share entire albums with people, which is what I'd want to do if I upload all my photos.

darkstar999 12y ago
> $8.25 a month Or "free" if you already had Prime. I can't see anyone signing up for it just for this new service.

amelius 12y ago

I just hope they don't make this public by default. I once made a wish-list on amazon, and it turned out to be public without me knowing it :S

geekam 12y ago
I had the same experience and I hated it. Although, a friend sent a book to me from that list on my birthday but overall it is a disconcerting experience.

baldfat 12y ago

CrashPlan+ for less then $5 a month unlimited backup. Also it runs on my Linux server and I can have all my computers and family computers backup to the linux machine for free then the Linux box is backed up.

general_failure 12y ago
Does CrashPlan+ have a mobile app to auto upload photos and such?
- rickyc091 12y ago
  Nope, their mobile app is used as a file manager for your backups. Crashplan has a desktop app that backs up your photos indefinitely though. It backups your external devices as well, been using them for years and I can't tell you how many times it's saved me.
pavel_lishin 12y ago
One problem with Crashplan is that it seems to be all-or-nothing. I've got it running on my desktop at home; I've got gigs and gigs of photos there. My macbook doesn't have enough free disk space to store all of them - and Crashplan doesn't let me store and sync just the 2014 photos.
- elmuchoprez 12y ago
  Backblaze is $5/month (per machine) and let's you grab single files (or directories) from your backup if you want.
  - pavel_lishin 12y ago
    Does it do selective sync? e.g., HOME:/media/pictures contains folders for 2014...etc, and LAPTOP:/media/pictures/ only contains 2014, and any changes to LAPTOP:/media/pictures/2014/ get propagated to HOME:/media/pictures/2014 etc?

tsemple 12y ago

Unlike Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft, OneDrive doesn't seem to sync a folder on my PC. You have to manually drag files and folders to upload them. But free (I already have Prime) is a good price to backup my 500GB of photos.

Fastidious 12y ago
Are you saying that the Amazon Cloud Drive client is allowing to access files on the cloud, that are not synchronized to your machine? If that is the case, this is a first, and it is great to hear!

zoul 12y ago

What’s superbly dumb is that we can’t use the storage and the clients interchangeably. The storage is almost always tied to the clients. I so wish I could just start the photo app of my choice and simply pointed it to my single paid cloud storage with a standardized API, be it from Google, Apple, Amazon or DropBox.

diafygi 12y ago
There are several JavaScript projects that aim to let you connect your own storage from a varity of locations. They are still pretty early on in development, though. 1. http://remotestorage.io/ http://remotestorage.io/ 2. http://cloud-rail.com/ http://cloud-rail.com/ 3. https://github.com/diafygi/byoFS https://github.com/diafygi/byoFS Disclosure: I maintain byoFS.
tOkeshu 12y ago
Well it's called Remote Storage [1] but I guess we can't expect companies like Google, Apple, Amazon or DropBox to actually embrace that, isnt it? [1] http://remotestorage.io/ http://remotestorage.io/
ghaff 12y ago
It's not a standardized API but you can use Lightroom plug-ins such as jfriedl's to "publish" to a variety of different sites. That said, this approach is more oriented toward uploading a curated and edited subset than your photos in bulk. On that topic, I suppose that I'm going to have to think about how much curation I should do for the multimedia that I keep at all. I'm backing up about 1.5TB to cloud storage and that's at or over the limit of what I really have the network bandwidth to reasonably deal with. And I know that most of what's backed up could be easily deleted--but it would take time to do that curation.
bengali3 12y ago
I was considering going after this as well, as none of the cloud storage providers would build an intuitive app to offer multiple backends that let you move away from their own. A small budget for a v1 desktop & mobile app that gracefully removed all this fuzziness could disrupt this 'store your photos here!' war between giants, using their own cloud file storage products. However that's when the transfer rates become switching costs... But I do believe photo storage is worth a premium over file storage specifically: Photos are of family; Family is cherished; some people would run into burning buildings to save family photo albums... is now the time?

derengel 12y ago

Of one drive, idrive and google drive I stick with dropbox because of its CLI linux client, are there any alternatives to dropbox for this?

cplease 12y ago
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/04/three-alternatives-ubuntu-one http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/04/three-alternatives-ubuntu... Copy looks promising. If you're willing to pay you use a service like rsync.net, or if you're willing to do a bit of setup you can just use any old shared hosting or VPS service. Or owncloud for some sugar.
- rsync 12y ago
  rsync.net has a special new-customer discount for HN readers (and has for a long time). Just email and ask for it.
mhd 12y ago
Copy has a command line client, and it's available for both Intel and ARM.

simonsarris 12y ago

I'm super happy about this! I have been looking for a way to easily offsite backup my photos without adding another row in my "cost of being alive"[1] spreadsheet (which already contains Prime). I don't need to access them, it doesn't have to be fancy, I just want to keep them safe at a second location. [1] Add up all the monthly/yearly services you pay for so that if you did literally nothing at all, that's the amount you'd be charged per month. Things like github, prime, linode, gym, parking permit, ACM membership, etc. That's your cost to just be alive (before choosing to consume anything).

jaredmcdonald 12y ago

What happens if you drop your Prime membership?

caublestone 12y ago
While it doesn't appear to be easily done through the UI, I'm sure contacting Amazon support will get you all of your files back.
otoburb 12y ago
Great question for such an important lock-in mechanism. Perhaps a 30-day grace period? No media release so far that I can find references the conditions to keep data beyond the free 5GB Cloud Drive limit.
rada 12y ago
There is an option to "Download All Files".
- agildehaus 12y ago
  Yes, but for how long? What if my credit card expires and I forget to update it? Is there a 30 day grace period for downloading them or are they wiped immediately?

mercwear 12y ago

I am trying to determine if this can be used for video storage as well. The documentation does not make that clear but it does state "rules" on video uploads in terms of length, file format and size.

rada 12y ago
The first thing that greeted me when I signed in (with my existing Prime membership) was an upload window titled "Drag photos and videos here".
- mercwear 12y ago
  Me too. But they do not state that video storage is free, only photo storage.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    Isn't a video just a sequence of photos ?
    - mercwear 12y ago
      In a sense. But a video file also stores things like sound which is one of the things that make the file size larger.
  - kaybe 12y ago
    Adding .jpg/similar to the end of the filename normally allows you to store about anything small enough, I found. (I didn't check here though.)

bengali3 12y ago

one more way to lock in that recurring Prime revenue :)

crazyjayd 12y ago
I am actually ok with it. As a house hold, we have one prime account, then we do the prime family share. So now everyone has unlimited storage in the house. Nice.
- bengali3 12y ago
  Interesting, I wasn't aware of the prime family share. thanks!

leejoramo 12y ago

Agree with Dave Winer on this: > Amazon talks about ways of accessing photos, but does not include an API, or even RSS. Why?? What a waste. https://twitter.com/davewiner/status/529637391951495168 https://twitter.com/davewiner/status/529637391951495168 I have looked at so many photo services and nothing is providing the tools or sustainable business plan that I am looking for.

corobo 12y ago
What are you looking for?
- OmarIsmail 12y ago
  As a new dad living away from my family, here's what I want: 1. cheap storage. I'm willing to pay $5 for 100GB. 2. don't muck around with my pictures. I have a nice camera. 3. don't copy all of the pictures on my account to all my devices, I'm trying to free up storage, not consume it. 4. let me setup a slideshow on my TV easily. I have (multiple) game consoles hooked up (that have web browsers). I have a Chromecast. Music + pictures = instant emotional win! Just let me pick an album "start slideshow" and put on some cheesy music automatically. 5. Let me easily share albums with family/friends, and let them access the pictures easily Right now Picasa + Google Plus is the closest. The one thing is that there is no good way to get a slideshow going on my TV. This is actually a big deal to me. I have a Chromecast and all the major game consoles connected to my TV - and there's still no good solution. OneDrive on Xbox One gets pretty close for TV slideshows, but then I have to upload an album specifically to OneDrive - which actually isn't too bad. But it's still cumbersome to get a slideshow with music going and because Xbox One doesn't do background music I have 1/4 of the screen taken up: * load up music app * find something to fit the "mood" which is annoying to do on Xbox Music * go to one drive * navigate to album * start slideshow * snap xbox music
  - guelo 12y ago
    They just released Chromecast Backdrop, https://www.google.com/chromecast/backdrop/ https://www.google.com/chromecast/backdrop/

chuckcode 12y ago

Am I just being cynical when I think that all new free photo storage just means that automated image recognition software has gotten good enough that companies want to process all my images and target me better? Is this like gmail where they get to machine read all your emails or is this the type of cloud that is just storage?

mliker 12y ago
That is quite cynical. Perhaps they want to compete against Dropbox, Microsoft, and Google for users wanting storage.
- krisdol 12y ago
  It already does, it's called Cloud Drive (and Zocalo). They might still end up snagging some users with this, but that doesn't take away from the possibility that they're using the info for advertising.
3JPLW 12y ago
The terms of how they use the photos in the EULA seem rather reasonable at first glance: "We may use, access, and retain Your Files in order to provide the Service to you and enforce the terms of the Agreement, and you give us all permissions we need to do so. These permissions include, for example, the rights to copy Your Files for backup purposes, modify Your Files to enable access in different formats, use information about Your Files to organize them on your behalf, and access Your Files to provide technical support." BUT: then they tack on "Amazon respects your privacy and Your Files are subject to the Amazon.com Privacy Notice." In the Privacy Notice, they state that any information you give Amazon in any way may be used "for such purposes as responding to your requests, customizing future shopping for you, improving our stores…" Not sure how this interfaces with the Cloud EULA, but it seems to do the opposite of "respecting your privacy."
uptown 12y ago
I'd assume that's exactly what they'll do. They've already demonstrated that they have the technology: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-phone/docs/understanding-firefly https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-p...

shittyanalogy 12y ago

All I want is cheap shipping.

ericcholis 12y ago

It's unlikely that I'd use this as my only means of photo storage. I will, however, use it to supplement iCloud and Backblaze. Yes, there should be some underlying universal API for data storage like this. But, in the meantime, I feel that tying myself to a single provider might bite me in the ass.

egeozcan 12y ago

I'm not 100% sure and didn't test it through but it seems to work with an Amazon.de Prime membership as well[1]. Usually these services arrive later. [1]: http://i.imgur.com/s4NwAs1.png http://i.imgur.com/s4NwAs1.png edit: False alarm, seems to be limited to 10GB.

3JPLW 12y ago
In the EULA, they note: "The Service is offered in the United States. We may restrict access from other locations."

davidw 12y ago

What happens when you let prime lapse or forget or whatever?

uniformlyrandom 12y ago
They charge you for the cloud storage?
misaelm 12y ago
From their help page: If you exceed the limit of your current storage plan, you won’t be able to upload additional content but you'll still be able to view, download and delete your files, photos, and personal videos for at least three months. During this time you can: ...Renew or sign-up for Amazon Prime to enjoy the Prime Photos benefit...

gutnor 12y ago

Seems like all the big storage provider are bundling up feature. Integration with all their product for Apple, Office 365 for Microsoft, now this for Amazon. I'm wondering if Dropbox has something in store ? Seems to me like they will need something soon to justify their premium prices.

spindritf 12y ago
They have a multiplatform client (including headless *nix) with a sync that actually works. Somehow no one else does.
- gordon_freeman 12y ago
  I think the only great thing remains about Dropbox is their awesome sync. But think biggies like Google,MS,Apple,etc. will soon catch up with it with sync service on par with Dropbox. Dropbox will need to come up with something to justify its being.

talltofu 12y ago

I wonder how this impacts SmugMug that is hosted on AWS.

mikecarlton 12y ago

Flickr offers 1TB photo storage free (with ads, $50/year without adds). How many of us have > 1TB of photos? And they've got an api https://help.yahoo.com/kb/flickr/difference-free-free-flickr-sln8863.html https://help.yahoo.com/kb/flickr/difference-free-free-flickr...

krisdol 12y ago
That's awesome. Do they compress uploads? Can I upload RAW images?
- vvvv 12y ago
  I think you need the pro version to download them back.
  - ValentineC 12y ago
    Flickr Pro was depreciated a few months back. All Flickr users are able to download their originals now!
- ValentineC 12y ago
  Flickr isn't great for hardcore photographers with plenty of RAW images. They don't keep metadata and filenames of the originals, and you won't be able to upload RAW images.
  - ghaff 12y ago
    I'm reasonably hardcore and find Flickr Pro fine--but for sharing and otherwise having them available online. It only functions as a backup in a "very worst case scenario" sort of sense. I use BackBlaze to store my Raw images (in addition to local backups).
    - matwood 12y ago
      Same. I think Flickr is a good worst case scenario backup. I still need to back up all of my RAWs somewhere. I work with s3 all day and will likely just write some scripts to manage my RAWs by hand. So far, I've just been lazy.

legohead 12y ago

does Amazon have 2 factor auth? considering the recent iCloud debacle, this would seem like a smart move. I see MFA [1] for AWS accounts, but not sure if that rolls over to the regular login as well. [1] http://aws.amazon.com/iam/details/mfa/ http://aws.amazon.com/iam/details/mfa/

zippergz 12y ago
It does not.
Chevalier 12y ago
This is a really big deal. I had started uploading photos before I searched for two-factor authentication... and immediately stopped when I realized it's not available. You would have to be an idiot to upload your photos to a service with nothing more secure than a password. And Amazon is more than just photos -- it's addresses, credit cards, purchase histories, subscriptions... Amazon, offer TFA asap please!

EZ-E 12y ago

Is this really "unlimited" ? What happens if I script n VPS servers with 10Mbps upload speed to generate random images and upload them to the service continuously ?

ghshephard 12y ago
I think you know what happens.

arenaninja 12y ago

<rant> ...and still no Amazon Instant Video on android tablets, only phone. But now that DMA is on android I can stop waiting and say goodbye to Amazon </rant>

gordon_freeman 12y ago

Unlimited photo storage was long due IMO. I remember when Google launched Gmail with 1GB storage, they blew away all the competitors such as AOL,Yahoo,Hotmail. That was the great customer acquisition move by Google. I kept wondering why nobody came forward with unlimited cloud storage or specifically photo storage! Also speaking strictly about the services I tried -- -- started using free Dropbox with camera uploads and with all friends referrals increased upto 10 GBs which is ultimately not good enough when you auto-upload images from phone camera. -- Then started using Flickr with 1 TB which does not have desktop client for simple drag-and-drop. -- Inconveniently tried using Google Drive on-and-off but simply cumbersome. Seems as a Primer subscriber, I will find this service valuable for auto-camera upload.

cbhl 12y ago
Bitcasa was originally billed as unlimited cloud storage, but I believe they've moved to having really large tiers now instead.
vidarh 12y ago
> I kept wondering why nobody came forward with unlimited cloud storage or specifically photo storage! Gmail could do that because "nobody" stored much e-mail. They could be on the case that most people would acquire more archived e-mail at a rate low enough that storage costs would drop quickly enough to cover a large percentage of the growth. In the end it also wasn't all that big deal when it came to customer acquisition: The major competitors all followed after they realised that it wouldn't drive their costs up all that much. Pictures are different. They are already big. And everyone have lots of pictures. The main reason for signing up for cloud storage for pictures is that you have too many of them to store on your phone/tablet/other small devices, while for e-mail features, and network effects (all those people that knows your e-mail address) mattered far more than storage (consider that e.g. Yahoo charged to upgrade to 50MB or 100MB storage before Gmail, and almost nobody did - the free amount was sufficient for most users). This is viable for Amazon because Prime customers are highly valuable and 1) we pay, 2) retaining us is worth lots of money - I've been up to over 200 orders a year from Amazon some years, 3) Amazon by now has years of experience driving down the cost of image storage, 4) it helps as a way of driving customers to their Fire platform (e.g. photos and videos in the Amazon cloud account show up on the Fire TV)

kin 12y ago

It's interesting. I signed up for Prime just for shipping. Now, I'm getting all these services "free". Granted, Prime's price increases here and there. But, because it's "free", it's easy for me to want to use it. Eventually I'm going to be using so many Prime services that I'll never want to cancel it.

wmeredith 12y ago
I'm exactly the opposite. I signed up for Prime for free shipping. They keep bundling it with more and more crap that I don't use. And it's not "free", the price is rising. I'll cancel if this keeps up.
- planetjones 12y ago
  Exactly - their tactics failed with me, as I cancelled my prime membership due to having Netflix already and not wanting to be force fed amazon's instant video for a hefty increase in the annual subscription price.
- baldfat 12y ago
  $100 and Amazon is still losing money on shipping alone. I don't see any of this as a "waste." $150 and I would still save on shipping.

ihiram 12y ago

Small test. Uploaded 2 files from my mac. Output from shasum: bead69d062c53436f19b6577ec7b524b9aa54445 DSC_0010.JPG 83ade975de96b81d272642740e06480fbc1484e1 DSC_0010.NEF Downloaded each file from Amazon Prime Photos. Filenames preserved. Filesizes the same. Output from shasum: bead69d062c53436f19b6577ec7b524b9aa54445 DSC_0010.JPG 83ade975de96b81d272642740e06480fbc1484e1 DSC_0010.NEF Lock-in and missing features aside, preserving the binary data is pretty cool, and it's honestly the most important thing when picking a place to store photos (for me). The most annoying thing was it treated the NEF and JPG files separately, and showed pictures twice in the UI.

swartkrans 12y ago
I'm pretty sure Dropbox doesn't change the binary data. What service changes it?
- LLWM 12y ago
  iCloud.
- arenaninja 12y ago
  Some time ago someone posted that SkyDrive (now OneDrive) did
  - nickbarnwell 12y ago
    Disclaimer: MSFT-employed. It's OneDrive for Business (i.e. SharePoint) that sometimes modifies uploaded files. To the best of my knowledge, OneDrive Consumer (http://onedrive.com http://onedrive.com) operates no differently than `rsync` would.
    - killerpopiller 12y ago
      how/why?
      - robododo 12y ago

swartkrans 12y ago

This is interesting, but the features aren't comparable to Dropbox and this is a sideshow for Amazon. I don't want to store my precious files at a place where storing files isn't the primary focus of their business.

rscott 12y ago
I think that Amazon AWS/S3 is significant reason to not call this a sideshow.
- djcapelis 12y ago
  And glacier. I wonder if they've got a good way to guess how cold someone's photos are likely to be.

hashtree 12y ago

As a, hopefully useful to someone, aside you can use icloud shared photo streams for nearly unlimited storage of casual photos/videos. You are limited to 5000, per stream. You can have 100 streams total: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4858 http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4858 Be aware, there is some downsizing that occurs: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5902 http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5902 (see: `Which photo and video formats and sizes does iCloud Photo Sharing support?`) Works nicely to get the most of your iOS device storage, share with family, mild private social interactions (e.g. commenting), OSX integration (e.g. you can have one central repo for wallpapers for all devices), etc.

Fastidious 12y ago

Amazon Cloud Drive, is it similar to Dropbox, Google Drive and iCloud, in the way it synchronizes data?

blisterpeanuts 12y ago

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos (If you don't feel like visiting TechCrunch.) Just for the sake of argument, why rent when you can own? For $99 a year, you can buy a 2-TB external drive (Seagate's is $90 on Amazon at this time) and keep backing up your stuff to fresh hardware. If you plan on subscribing to Amazon Prime in perpetuity, great. But if you should change your mind, you have a pretty big downloading task ahead of you to get all these images and move them elsewhere. Of course, you do have them all safely backed up on at least two local devices, do you not? In which case, why pay extra for AMZN's service? I let Google+ back up my phone photos and videos because why not? It's convenient. But I still plug in the phone and pull the camera folder onto a hard drive periodically. There's also the privacy consideration. Now that we all know the NSA can take our data arbitrarily, secretly, and with impunity, do we really want a pictorial guide to our lives to be out there and available for them to peruse?

bpodgursky 12y ago
Having photos on my own external hard drive is an enormous liability. Even ignoring the risk of a fire / theft / loss (not to mention the hassle itself of backing them up locally), drives fail. > have a pretty big downloading task ahead of you to get all these images and move them elsewhere I would say instead you have an enormous uploading task ahead of you to move 2 Tb of photos from your HDD into the cloud somewhere. Plus, the main reason I have photos is to share them with other people. If I'm going to end up uploading them somewhere else, it's just easier. I know opinions differ on privacy, but I honestly could not care less who sees my vacation photos.
guelo 12y ago
The main advantages are: - the auto-backup apps on the different platforms - the web interface for online browsing and sharing. - not having to worry about hard drive failures.
wdr1 12y ago
> Just for the sake of argument, why rent when you can own? For $99 a year, you can buy a 2-TB external drive (Seagate's is $90 on Amazon at this time) and keep backing up your stuff to fresh hardware. I do this (home backups), but I also value having offsite backups. I don't see Prime photos as a reason to signup for Prime by itself, but hell, as a longtime Prime member who has signed up just for shipping, I'm obviously very happy with how they've continued to role out perks. I don't even plan to use Photos (OS X isn't supported yet, anyway), but I love the demonstration of their commitment to Prime members. More than anything, that's where I think things like this are valuable.

zyxley 12y ago

Does anyone know if this preserves Mac extended file attributes (which contain tags, etc)? Dropbox does, which is pretty nice.

Spooky23 12y ago

They jacked up the price of Amazon Prime significantly and play games with the shipping times compared to when the service first came out. Since most people probably subscribed in the 4th quarter. My guess is they've So just like politicians roll out the pork before Election Day, Amazon is giving us all sorts of wonderful things to keep Prime around into the new year. (Example: the TV stick that doesn't ship until mid January)

stealthlogic 12y ago

Brought to you free of charge by the NSA.

Corrado 12y ago

I wish this would integrate with Apple iPhoto or the upcoming Photos app. My goal is to have all my photos locally stored on my iMac so that I can create slideshows, burn CDs, edit photos, etc. but I also want them securely stored off-site. That's the best of both worlds.

uvexdme 12y ago

I had thousands of pics so I wrote an ugly but effective python script to copy all the jpg files recursively and rename them in one single folder to upload. feel free to check it out! https://github.com/zork3/copyandchangeJPG/tree/master https://github.com/zork3/copyandchangeJPG/tree/master

markpundmann 12y ago

I wonder how long it will be until amazon gets brought up for abusing their market power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_bundling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_bundling

s3r3nity 12y ago

I tend to like Onedrive's photo storage & management -- and since I have Office 365, it's unlimited as well. Good move on Amazon's part to compete - not sure how Dropbox and the like will keep up with this movement towards free unlimited storage.

warble 12y ago

Hmm. No way to work with the files directly, no organization tools, seems like just a pile of files which doesn't help me much. Maybe it's because I'm in linux and can't use their desktop client.

warble 12y ago
My bad, I didn't see that you can put things in folders at least.

PStamatiou 12y ago

Related RFS: Storage for Photographers http://paulstamatiou.com/storage-for-photographers/ http://paulstamatiou.com/storage-for-photographers/ This doesn't quite meet my needs yet without a decent Mac uploader client but I'll be keeping an eye on it. I have about a TB or so of RAWs and videos in Glacier right now.

nolite 12y ago

What happens to the photos when you stop paying for Prime?

PhasmaFelis 12y ago

So how long until someone figures out how to encode arbitrary binaries as a series of JPGs and implements a general-purpose, unlimited-size cloud drive on top of this?