
Introducing Amazon Cloud Drive - ssclafani
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore
======
marcamillion
I think tonight is one of those nights where all
cellphones/pagers/beepers/inboxes are going crazy at Dropbox.

Should be interesting to see how they respond in the coming days - if at all.

I hope Dropbox realizes that they can't compete with their supplier on price -
so they need to differentiate themselves on value.

These prices are seriously ridiculous. 50% lower across the board. Kinda
messed up - but I am in no hurry to leave dropbox any time soon.

Keep doing what you do dropbox. I am rooting for you.

~~~
axomhacker
Considering Dropbox is probably one of the biggest users of S3, it's not
entirely impossible that they were in the know.

~~~
taken11
Is Dropbox bigger than Netflix in terms of traffic/storage?

~~~
sradnidge
I believe so <http://pycon.blip.tv/file/4878722/>

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statictype
This is nice but doesn't strike me as competition for Dropbox in any way. The
strength of Dropbox is in the deceptively dead simple client interface that
lets it work without you having to think about it.

Amazon isn't addressing that here.

~~~
jschuur
Correct. There's no Mac/PC client that emulates a local drive/folder (yet).
Just an Air MP3 uploadeder app and a web based file upload for other types of
files.

I wonder if you could isolate the S3 bucket used and use existing S3 clients.
Of course then you might as well use raw S3.

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n0on3
Take a look at point 5.2 of the Term of Use. Link: <http://amzn.to/eeSaB3>
Quote: " 5.2 Our Right to Access Your Files. You give us the right to access,
retain, use and disclose your account information and Your Files: to provide
you with technical support and address technical issues; to investigate
compliance with the terms of this Agreement, enforce the terms of this
Agreement and protect the Service and its users from fraud or security
threats; or as we determine is necessary to provide the Service or comply with
applicable law." ... not that encouraging imho.

~~~
wladimir
They can't guarantee not accessing the files you store on their servers. That
makes sense, though it's a bit creepy.

If you store encrypted files with them (and not store the encryption key in
the same place) I guess it's not really an issue.

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todd3834
I don't think Amazon is looking to compete with Dropbox but really iTunes in
the cloud. For them, competing with Dropbox would be like shooting themselves
in the foot. As long as Dropbox remains on S3, Amazon makes more money the
more successful Dropbox gets. If they start to compete directly Dropbox will
surely move to a cheaper solution and Amazon will loose a pretty large
contract. They would also loose some trust with developers who feel Amazon
might smash them at any moment. If Dropbox ever moved as they probably will, I
think Amazon may consider competing, but even then don't seem to be in the
business of creating client software (exception kindle).

~~~
mryall
You have made a really insightful comment, but I struggle to read it without
wincing because of the misspellings.

 _lose_ , v. to part with something

 _loose_ , adj. not tight.

So yeah, Amazon might lose a large contract and might lose trust with
developers. Sorry if it's a bit off-topic but I just wanted to mention how
off-putting it is.

~~~
todd3834
Sorry, I was half asleep and typing on my iPad

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pjscott
I'm curious what they mean by "secure", since they seem to be trumpeting it as
a major selling point. They say that all communication goes through HTTPS,
which is nice, but they don't say if the information is encrypted on their
servers as well. Can someone who gets a VM running on the same machine use
clever side-channel trickery to peek at my files? Can a government get Amazon
to quietly reveal all my data?

What would be really nice is something where files get stored fully encrypted,
with the key derived client-side from your username and password, _and_ the
connections all use HTTPS. (Or something similar. I'm not a security expert,
so take this with a grain of salt.)

~~~
epochwolf
You could always use a truecrypt volume if you're paranoid.

~~~
pig
If you are paranoid^, you wouldn't use TrueCrypt.
[http://brianpuccio.net/excerpts/is_truecrypt_really_safe_to_...](http://brianpuccio.net/excerpts/is_truecrypt_really_safe_to_use)

^ good sense of the word

~~~
TillE
If you toss out the GUI stuff and the boilerplate encryption algorithms, the
amount of important code in TrueCrypt is fairly small. It has, naturally
enough, been subjected to attempts to break it:

[http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security-
management/2008/07/17/s...](http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security-
management/2008/07/17/schneier-research-team-cracks-truecrypt-39448526/)

Writing a sentence like "Some folks claim it has a backdoor" is painfully
dishonest, manipulative, and scummy.

~~~
mynegation
> If you toss out the GUI stuff and the boilerplate encryption algorithms, the
> amount of important code in TrueCrypt is fairly small.

First of all, even if you use "boilerplate" encryption algorithms, crypto is
ridiculously easy to get wrong, especially in a very demanding setting of disk
encryption. Second, TrueCrypt's ability to present its volumes as virtual
drives/mountable images is no small feat (both in Linux and NT).

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dfischer
Amazon is going to be one of the biggest tech companies of the decade for
growth and innovation. I'm going to invest tomorrow.

~~~
ryandvm
Amazon is the opposite of eBay. Seriously, I can not think of two companies
farther apart on the innovation spectrum.

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cletus
I'm kinda bemused at the idea that 5GB is enough for my music collection or
even some reasonable portion of it. I mean think about it: who here really
gets by with a 4GB (or even 8GB) MP3 player?

I'd probably need 200GB ($200/year). A more reasonable person would probably
be fine with 20 or 50GB ($20/50 per year).

I'm not sure I understand the business model and the hype behind cloud syncing
of music though. What is the point? If you're going to copy onto an MP3 player
you'll need a local copy. So the use cases are:

1\. On the Web;

2\. On networked mobiles; and

3\. As a form of backup.

Well (1) is covered quite well with Grooveshark. I can find most things I want
there and it's an awful lot cheaper (up to free).

(2) I don't think makes a lot of sense given the high cost of mobile data.
Maybe in the future mobile data will be an awful lot cheaper but there are
fundamental limitations with wireless bandwidth that I think will make that
very difficult.

There are many solutions for (3). In terms of raw storage, Amazon's prices are
pretty cheap. But backup misses the point entirely I think.

When I buy digital content of any sort I don't want to back it up. I want to
be able to recover it easily and simply. iTunes for example only allows
downloading movies once (is that right?). If so, I'm just never going to buy
movies that way. If I pay for it and can watch what I download any number of
times, why can't I download it again if I accidentally lose it?

So iTunes and Amazon MP3s need this feature: log onto my account and click a
link that says "download all purchased tracks".

At that point I don't _need_ backup of any kind (for my digital content).

I think the only business model that makes sense is flat-rate subscriptions.
You don't store your own music. The provider simply has all the music. This
solves a lot of storage problems for the provider (meaning 1000 people share
the same copy of the song rather than each uploading and storing it
individually).

I can see how they'll get some scale here by having duplicates of some songs
(particularly iTunes and Amazon bought MP3s). It'd be interesting to know how
much saved space they have from deduplication.

Anyway, am I missing something here?

~~~
jcampbell1
If you have 200GB of music, you have 195GB of crap.

~~~
mthoms
Or you have really diverse music tastes and prefer lossless formats?

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orionlogic
Storage price still 12x more then traditional harddrive backup(1TB=1000$).
That 12x is what you are paying for cloud value added service. Prices should
be at least half in order for consumer market to take off.It will come.

In the mean time, still waiting for revamped MobileMe. An O/S integrated cloud
service seems to me much way better than any others. Airdrop might be the
interface for all filesharing solutions in MAC devices.

~~~
mustpax
Dropbox will transparently sync a folder on your computer which makes it as
integrated with the OS as your local file system. How much more integration do
you need? Are there some system calls that the Darwin kernel could implement
to make the integration tighter?

~~~
orionlogic
Why shall i need an app while its given a system feature?

BTW who knows what new OSX features will bring, new file system for better
sync for air, a new pure friendly UI? Who knows...

And i don't like apps that depended some other major competitors than my
environment.

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ch0wn
"Oops, Adobe Flash Player is required to upload files"

Bye.

~~~
magic_haze
I didn't really notice it till I read this comment, but considering their
long-available AWS Console is also a flash app, it makes sense, and it sure
doesn't seem like that this is all the surprise to dropbox that people
elsewhere on this thread are talking about.

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pat2man
Half the price of dropbox, this is just begging for a kick ass desktop/mobile
app.

~~~
blocke
"Half the price of dropbox, this is just begging for a kick ass desktop/mobile
app."

And I want a pony.

No client sync software, no sharing. I think the Dropbox folks will sleep well
at night.

Smooth client software is half the value of paying for Dropbox and I don't see
an Amazon side project challenging Dropbox in client usability anytime soon.

This looks more like a middle finger to any eventual iTunes cloud strategy.

~~~
marcamillion
I think one thing everybody should have learnt about Amazon is that they have
perfected the MVP strategy. This is JUST ground-zero.

In the coming weeks/months, expect to see rapid iterations...i.e. I wouldn't
be surprised if they announce a desktop-side client in relatively short order.

How on earth does a large company like Amazon manage to keep pushing out so
many innovative products so frequently.

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ck2
They are giving away 20gb for a $2 purchase

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000667531>

~~~
ScottWhigham
Just have to remember this tidbit: "Unless you set your account to auto-renew
to a paid plan, the 20 GB plan will revert to a free plan one year from the
date of your MP3 album purchase." I'm pretty certain that Amazon will make
sure to let you know well ahead of time. But I'm only "pretty certain", not
"completely certain".

~~~
allwein
Hopefully they'll gracefully degrade like Dropbox does. They leave all your
existing data there for you to access, but you can't add/change any files
until you either renew or reduce your usage back down the free tier.

------
dfischer
Also, another comment... Cloud Drive needs an API or client side mount support
to really take off.

~~~
jmatt
Yeah I was expecting that. Something that was more or less a drop-in
replacement for Dropbox. Plus the bonus of streaming with Cloud Player. No
doubt Amazon wanted to get it out there in the hands of customers and beat
Apple and the WWDC. As long as they keep improving it in the next few months I
don't think anyone will remember that they launched with a MVC.

------
amitagrawal
I think it is still more expensive than Google to store photos and documents.

Google storage plans are almost a quarter of what Amazon is charging for! For
20GB you pay $20/yr and with Google it's just $5 (for 20GB). Have a look -
<https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage>

Am I missing something?

~~~
bane
Out of curiosity, do you know of a local client or tool that can mount my
Google storage locally? I/O to it is a serious PIA through the web interface
compared to my smaller but easier to use Dropbox.

~~~
amitagrawal
Actually I used one way back when Google didn't give an option to upload any
type of file. I used Gmail drive
(<http://www.filehippo.com/download_gmail_drive/>) which creates an actual
drive on your computer where you can just put your files and it'll upload to
Gmail as an attachment.

It's good for files upto 25MB (Gmail attachment size) and if you have inbox
issues like me then it's not that a good option.

Then there's Gladinet Desktop app (paid) which I have no experience using,
here's the link -
[http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?pro...](http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=1927+12624351498939350646)

------
phillco
Interesting, especially since Dropbox stores its files on Amazon's servers
(S3).

~~~
TheSwede75
Not for long I would bet.

S3 is a great service don't get me wrong. But for relatively low transaction
data like backup and sync not only is the pricing high but Dropbox also have a
vested interest that as they grow they do not depend on a 3rd party for what
is no doubt the largest single cost of providing their service.

~~~
mryall
I guess it depends on whether Dropbox think they could implement the same
storage service cheaper themselves. S3 actually offers _a lot_. They have at
least four nines availability (and I think you can pay for more), a
ridiculously high durability figure, plus geographic distribution and
replication.

Developing that for yourself would be very expensive, I imagine. I'd actually
be quite surprised if Dropbox went through the hassle of setting this all up.
It would have to be a significant difference in cost to justify the effort.

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navs
Currently limited to a web interface and requiring the use of flash. No option
for a basic uploader like Dropbox? I assume desktop clients will eventually
arrive along with smartphone apps.

No doubt Amazon has the resources to compete with Dropbox. Can Dropbox fight
back against such a Behemoth? Customer loyalty aside, what can Dropbox do to
stay ahead of Amazon?

Can't wait to see how far this evolves.

------
Genmai
As the cloud becomes increasingly more relevant as a reliable and scalable
storage solution, this trend conjures memories of Sun's Net PC back in the
90s: [http://news.cnet.com/DEMO-96-Net-PC-from-Sun-shines-at-
show/...](http://news.cnet.com/DEMO-96-Net-PC-from-Sun-shines-at-
show/2100-1001_3-203291.html)

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znt
If they let me upload and download files using an API instead of browser and
all that CAPTCHA nonsense I would actually invest time and maybe some money to
develop a native client for this service.

But considering the current experience of 'storing a file' I'm better off
sending myself an email, let alone using Dropbox.

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campo
It would be very surprising to me if PaulG or anybody else at YC approved
Dropbox's application without receiving what they believed to be a
satisfactory answer to a question along the lines of "What happens when Amazon
becomes your competition?"

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pestaa
If this product urges Dropbox to release the web api version 1, I'm happy.

 _That_ alone will put Dropbox in the top of the game if it's not already
there, as tons of devs will rush to develop 3rd party apps for it.

The same doesn't apply to ACD, _yet_.

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delineal
Until end-to-end bandwidth improves and per-terabyte prices drop
significantly, I'll wait to move to the cloud. The value isn't yet there for
me.

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Hipchan
Anyone know of a drive that I can stream videos from?

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riobard
Do not support files > 2GB in size. No go.

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hanifvirani
I am a happy Dropbox user and not planning to move away anytime soon. Amazon's
expansion strategy is commendable though.

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s00pcan
Being that dropbox uses amazon S3, I can't say I would expect them to be
surprised at this.

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alienfluid
How is this compared to SkyDrive?

~~~
bruceboughton
CloudDrive is more overcast.

~~~
StacyC
Superlative.

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Havoc
Awesome. I'll park my (encrypted) backups of docs there.

------
u48998
I feel like back in 1999 with this Amazon Cloud Storage/Player. Any case,
Amazon is like a giant grocery store which is always selling something. It
feel creepy to house my files at their store.

