[German]Amazon is discontinuing its online storage and cloud service Amazon Drive for customers for 11 years. That's according to an email that affected Amazon customers must have received. However, the end is not until December 31, 2023.
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I confess, this offer from Amazon somehow passed me by. The online shipper Amazon probably also wanted to counter Google Drive, OneDrive or iCloud in the cloud storage business. Therefore, the cloud service Amazon Drive was offered since 11 years.
Amazon Prime users-could already use unlimited storage space for photos on a cloud service Amazon Drive. Furthermore, 5 GBytes of storage space was available for all other files (videos or MP3s, etc.). The whole thing was free for Amazon Prime users and could be used via app.
But users, who need more storage space, and also storage space for other file formats, could subscribe to Amazon Drive (for 1.99 2.999 US $ a month, depending from the storage volume).
Amazon Drive will shutdown
Customers who have booked Amazon Drive have now received an email informing them that the service will be discontinued after 11 years (see Neowin here and The Verge here). Here are the relevant dates in chronological order.
- On October 31, 2022, the app for accessing cloud storage will be removed from the Store (Android, iOS). However, those who have installed the app will still be able to use it.
- From January 31, 2023, uploads will no longer be accepted (you will only be able to view and download content).
- The service will be discontinued on December 31, 2023, and access will be disabled. Then no more access is possible, those who have not downloaded their content before then will lose it.
An email from Amazon to customers states:
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We will continue to provide customers the ability to safely back up, share, and organize photos and videos with Amazon Photos.[…]
We are taking the opportunity to more fully focus our efforts on Amazon Photos to provide customers a dedicated solution for photos and video storage.
From this it can be concluded that the storage of photos and videos on "Amazon Photos" will somehow continue to be offered, and they want to focus on this service. For that, there will be the Amazon Photos app. But storage of other files on Amazon Drive will end at the end of 2023, and Amazon has put up an FAQ about the end of its cloud service offering. Customers can cancel their Amazon Drive subscription after signing up here.
