
Amazon Prime Photos - wengzilla
https://www.amazon.com/gp/drive/landing/photos
======
wspeirs
It's clear that the cost of storage is approaching $0, but it's surprising to
me that the price of these company's services vary so much:

\- Box: $180/year for unlimited
([https://www.box.com/pricing/](https://www.box.com/pricing/))

\- Google: $120/year for 1TB
([https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375123?hl=en](https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375123?hl=en))

\- Dropbox: $100/year for 1TB
([https://www.dropbox.com/pro](https://www.dropbox.com/pro))

\- Amazon: $60/year for unlimited
([https://www.amazon.com/gp/drive/landing/everything/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/drive/landing/everything/))

\- Microsoft: $60/year for 1TB ([https://products.office.com/en-
us/business/compare-office-36...](https://products.office.com/en-
us/business/compare-office-365-for-business-plans))

They all offer approximately the same service, but from cheapest to priciest
is almost 3x. I wonder how much sand is left in the hourglass for companies
like Box & Dropbox? Also, how much longer will Google keep their price at
$120/year for 1TB when Amazon is half that for unlimited storage? Also, does
your average Joe even care when you get 15GB for free from Google?

~~~
wpietri
Personally, I'm happy to keep paying Dropbox. The Amazon and Google offerings
aren't so much commercial products as hegemony extensions. When something's a
sideline, I think there's a much higher risk of a mediocre product (e.g.,
Google Plus) or that eventually gets killed because strategery (e.g., Google
Reader).

I'm ok with that for things I don't care too much about losing, but my photos
are precious to me, so I'll keep them with a company whose main business is
not losing my stuff. Dropbox has one job, and so far they have consistently
acted like they know it.

~~~
CydeWeys
Google Photos is really good at viewing/galleries/sharing and indexing, and
especially so at applying machine intelligence for categorization and tagging.
How well does Dropbox handle this stuff?

------
spilk
Didn't they launch this last year?

[http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/cloud-storage/amazon-
pr...](http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/cloud-storage/amazon-prime-gains-
unlimited-photo-storage-with-caveats/d/d-id/1317235)

~~~
zeeshanm
I guess nobody paid attention last time. It's a classic trick to launch over
and over again until someone cares to give two cents.

~~~
dkrich
Well to be fair, I don't see anywhere in the page itself indicating that this
is a new launch, just the HN title.

------
alexandrerond
Reminds me of Microsoft's unlimited storage adventure

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/3/9662414/microsoft-
reduces-...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/3/9662414/microsoft-reduces-free-
onedrive-storage-15-to-5-gb-removes-unlimited)

~~~
SyneRyder
Bingo. And in years gone by Bitcasa did the same, starting with an unlimited
plan and once people were locked in, increasing prices 10x (from $99 to $999):

[http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/19/bitcasa-infinite-cloud-
st...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/19/bitcasa-infinite-cloud-storage-
price-change/)

~~~
Veratyr
Bitcasa is even worse. Not only did they sell unlimited and retract it, they
claim zero knowledge encryption without providing it, as the key is linked to
the password which is used to access your account through the web interface.

The sad thing is apparently they're partnered with larger companies like
Samsung, Intel and Huawei, so their product is being spread to people who
likely don't know any better.

------
frik
Amazon nags me quite a bit and tries to upsale me to Prime on the Amazon
website.

Every single time I click "check out" and in several other places I get these
Prime popovers or full page ads with a very small "No thanks" or "Cancel"
link. There are now even normal non-Amazon products that are sold only to
Prime members. Is this how Amazon.com cares about loyal 15+ year consumers?

I DO NOT WANT PRIME, GOT IT? Not now, not tomorrow, not next months, never.
Why should I pay a premium membership for a virtual shopping center?!? Are
there any "Prime"-nag-screen blocker browser plugins?...

~~~
blhack
I'm seriously curious why you don't want prime. Do you live in an area where
it doesn't benefit you or something? If you are really ordering more than a
few items a year for them, it makes total financial sense to get it for the
shipping alone.

The movies, photo storage, tv shows, music etc. are just icing on the cake.

~~~
frik
What's so special about "saying no"? I have my principles, and companies
better respect them.

I got several downvotes for my comment, but in the end more upvotes.

Btw. shipping is free for my check outs too. Maybe I just don't want and need
their streaming services? Maybe I already use something that fits my needs?
Maybe I live in an area where they tested Prime and therefor made the delivery
time worse (from 2 days to 4-5 days)?

Ask yourself: would you like to pay a membership fee for Walmart/etc and for
shopping centers? Nevertheless, Amazon.com is first and foremost an digital
shopping center. It's my right as a customer to say "no thanks", and Amazon
should acknowledge my decision.

------
aresant
To clear up the pricing confusion:

\- It's FREE for Prime Members

\- It's $11.99 a year for non-prime members

The other caveat is that it's unlimited for photos, but only 5gig of video.

~~~
oh_sigh
Can I store my videos frame-by-frame as images?

~~~
vagelim
ffmpeg -i input.mov -r 24 output_%06d.png

~~~
burningion
Great! Now embed audio into each of these pngs as a waveform at the bottom.

------
joesmo
The risk of Amazon shutting down your account, even as a Prime member, is too
high to justify investment in any of their cloud services or hardware. Even if
they don't actually shut down your account and just send you threats based on
fictional terms of service that you've never agreed to, as they did to me, I
would never trust them with anything sensitive again. I wouldn't be surprised
if they start shutting down AWS services in the future for arbitrary
violations not stated in any terms of service. This kind of behavior should
not have to be tolerated by loyal, paying customers, yet Amazon has been doing
it continuously for many years.

~~~
ihodes
Why did they threaten to shut down your account?

~~~
kimcheekumquat
Probably doing something that violates TOS or something borderline illegal. I
see cases like his all the time on various forums and they seems to be missing
some important details...

~~~
joesmo
There's nothing illegal about returning defective products. In fact, there's
nothing in the TOS about returning too many products or anything like that.

~~~
kimcheekumquat
Oh okay I see. I thought you meant you were using Amazon Web Services to do
something or host something borderline illegal, which I have actually seen a
couple times while working here.

------
ck2
I'm sure someone somewhere is working on code to break up large files into
multiple images.

$1/month for image hosting is dirt cheap though if you can do public url
access to images.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Anyone have any info on Amazon's security practices for their cloud/photo
storage? I'm slightly more tempted to go with them to store my photos than
Google, if only for the implicit contract that I'm paying them to be a Prime
Member and hence paying in some way for the storage, so they should in theory
be less likely to try to profit off of my photos...but I'm also still
paranoid.

~~~
bognition
I'd be surprised if they aren't just using a thin layer on top of S3 which is
pretty solid. Historically amazon has a really good track record of keeping
data secured.

------
gtrubetskoy
I wonder if you can use it to back up arbitrary files - if you take any file
and prepend it with "GIF89a=\t0\t;;;;" it becomes a valid GIF.

~~~
bognition
ha, I remember when people used Gmail to do this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GmailFS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GmailFS)

------
jkraker
This was announced a couple months ago.

------
remremz
I just use Google Photos for backup which while is reduced in quality its
enough for my needs. Best of all its unlimited storage and its free.

------
bognition
Does anyone know what the privacy restrictions around your photos are? Does
amazon reserve the right to scan/analyze the images? I'm becoming increasingly
wary of freebies like this, especially ones that provide advertisers/retailers
a detailed and intimate view into your life.

~~~
ilikepi
The Cloud Drive terms[1] don't sound like they're particularly interested in
the contents of your photos, however they are somewhat vague. Section 3.3
seems to have the meat of it:

3.3 _Our Use of Your Files to Provide the Service._ 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. Amazon respects your privacy and Your
Files are subject to the Amazon.com Privacy Notice located at
www.amazon.com/privacy.

[1]:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?ie=UTF...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201376540)

~~~
6stringmerc
Quite helpful. I think a part of note is "...and enforce the terms of the
Agreement" as it might relate to content that is not permitted. Would be
helpful to compare/contrast with any statements regarding uploading of
copyright material not copyright of the account owner, which seems like the
typical pretext for basic overview? Just musing here.

~~~
ilikepi
Yeah, I'd imagine third-party copyright enforcement would be the primary
consideration there, though they also include the typical prohibitions of
objectionable material.

1.2 _Using Your Files with the Service._ You may use the Service only to
store, retrieve, manage, and access Your Files for personal, non-commercial
purposes using the features and functionality we make available. You may not
use the Service to store, transfer or distribute content of or on behalf of
third parties, to operate your own file storage application or service, to
operate a photography business or other commercial service, or to resell any
part of the Service. You are solely responsible for Your Files and for
complying with all applicable copyright and other laws, including import and
export control laws and regulations, and with the terms of any licenses or
agreements to which you are bound. You must ensure that Your Files are free
from any malware, viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, worms, or other malicious
or harmful code.

1.3 _Sharing Your Files._ The Service may provide features that allow you to
share Your Files with others. You may only share Your Files in which you have
all necessary copyright and other rights. If you share a file, anyone with
access to that file may view and download copies of the file. You are solely
responsible for how you share Your Files and who may access Your Files that
you share. You may not share files (a) that contain defamatory, threatening,
abusive, pornographic, or otherwise objectionable material, (b) that advocate
bigotry, hatred, or illegal discrimination, or (c) if sharing those files
violates any law, any intellectual property, publicity, privacy, or other
right of others, or any license or other agreement by which you are bound.

------
abalone
This is a deceptive HN post with a "vote-bait" title. There was no launch.
This is a year old.

------
Rygu
Has anyone successfully backed up iPhone Live Photos on a photo storage
service that's not iCloud?

------
jobu
Are there any tools to upload the Photos library for Mac users? I tried the
"Amazon Cloud Drive" app, but it's useless. Even when I drill down into the
.photoslibrary package the Amazon syncing app gives a "File type error".

~~~
Corrado
My thoughts exactly. The first company (besides Apple) to come up with a
Photos plugin has my business. I'm currently using the Apple cloud product but
it is sooo confusing it's almost not worth it.

IMHO, Dropbox got this right. Simple to install, simple to configure, simple
to use. Apple's solution is a confusing mess of Family members, devices, Apple
iCloud accounts, etc. Every time I share something with my wife's iPad I have
to physically touch it to make sure I did it correctly and it is syncing like
it should. _sigh_

------
recycledair
It's a free trials. It costs $11.99/year.

~~~
mey
This detail is horribly hidden. It looks like it's 11.99/year for non-prime
members. Free for prime members.

Getting this from, go into your Amazon Cloud Drive, then click Manage Storage
on the right side.

Two plans listed, Unlimited Photos and Unlimited Everything.

~~~
mey
Found this
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=201480950)

------
akurilin
On that note, what's the most convenient way out there if you want to use a
cloud service as an external drive to store most of your images in RAW format?

Ideally you wouldn't have to keep them all on your local drive, only the ones
you're working with. I know S3 would be a fit, but I'm thinking something
equally cheap, but with a nicer web interface specific to photography and
similar affordable pricing.

~~~
asciimo
Amazon considers Canon, Nikon, and Sony RAW formats, as well as Adobe Digital
Negatives, as "photos" in terms of unlimited storage.
([https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201649930))

------
tmaly
Right now I use backblaze for $5 a month.

This covers my photos and videos on OSX.

I saw in another comment that backblaze is only one datacenter.

If Amazon included video even if it was only 1 TB I would dump backblaze.

I may still use the prime photos for my iphone as apple cannot backup the
amount of photos I take to their cloud.

Transferring them to the iMac for backblaze is a pain.

If Prime Photos had a print service where we could do Christmas cards etc that
would be even cooler.

~~~
vitd
Why do you have to transfer your photos to the iMac for back blaze? They have
an iOS client. [0]

[0][https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/backblaze/id628638330?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/backblaze/id628638330?mt=8)

~~~
aganders3
The Backblaze iOS client is for access/retrieval, not for backing up files
from the iOS device.

------
danso
Anyone use this service as a backup of photos? I have several terabytes of
photos (in RAW format), which is not a huge expense to throw onto
Glacier...but if I could just toss them up in an album as a last-resort-yet-
free backup...then I'd feel even better about still subscribing to Amazon
Prime despite infrequently ordering physical products.

------
silveira
Maybe this could be an alternative to Flickr for me. Unfortunately there is no
Linux client, I hope there is an API.

------
skool
If they included unlimited video storage this would be more interesting. (This
was announced November 4th)

------
cmurf
JPEG only? Or Raw/DNG too?

~~~
Veratyr
They support RAW files:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201649930)

This makes it superior to Google Photos for backup in my opinion. Amazon
provides free (with Prime) backup with no limits, RAW support and no
recompression. Google Photos provides it for free but with lossy compression
and without the possibility of retaining the range of RAW.

~~~
xur17
It definitely makes it superior to Google Photos for backup, but Google Photos
is drastically superior for viewing your photos. Automatic face detection /
grouping, and really good search functionality help a ton.

------
ausjke
time to ditch flickr then? as I have the prime membership at amazon? wish I
can import flickr into amazon somehow.

on the other hand I hope they support client-side encryption so someone can
only view the pictures after they're decrypted

~~~
ausjke
how to define "picture", can I hide my files into some picture then upload it
and essentially use amazon-picture-unlimited as an unlimited file storage?

~~~
mxuribe
While I haven't read Amazon's terms of use as to whether this is ok from a
policy perspective, most back-up services don't check for "files within
pictures". In fact, the hiding of data within imagery is called Steganography:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography)

Although the intent with Steganography is (weak) cryptography, the method
should work for your purposes; only way to know is to test it! Admittedly
until you've tested this thoroughly, I would not RELY on this for anything
other than a fun test. Enjoy! :-)

------
stephengoodwin
Is this new? I've been using this for over a month now.

------
DrFence
I wish Google and or iOS would allow me to tag.

