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Amazon Prime Photos

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Re: Amazon Prime Photos

#51

Post by bognition »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #45

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.

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.

Re: Amazon Prime Photos

#53

Post by ilikepi »

bognition wrote: post #50

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.

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...

Re: Amazon Prime Photos

#54

Post by legulere »

wspeirs wrote: post #11

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/ ) - Google: $120/year for 1TB ( https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375123?hl=en ) - Dropbox: $100/year for 1TB ( https://www.dropbox.com/pro ) - Amazon: $60/year for unlimited ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/drive/land…

Also iCloud 120 $ per year for 1 TB. The pattern I see is that successful companies that already have their product out there charge more: Google has a big install base of Android phones and the Chrome browser. Apple has a big install base of iOS devices and Macs. Dropbox is also really popular. Microsoft on the other hand mostly has legacy installations on the desktop and a tiny share of the mobile market - even less so if you look at typical power users that use products like these. Amazon is the total newcomer.

So I guess both try to attract pro users with low cost.

Re: Amazon Prime Photos

#55

Post by msh »

copperx wrote: post #44
wspeirs wrote: post #11

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/ ) - Google: $120/year for 1TB ( https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375123?hl=en ) - Dropbox: $100/year for 1TB ( https://www.dropbox.com/pro ) - Amazon: $60/year for unlimited ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/drive/land…

Do any of these companies provide an official Linux client?

Dropbox does.

Re: Amazon Prime Photos

#56

Post by 6stringmerc »

ilikepi wrote: post #53
bognition wrote: post #50

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.

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…

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.

Re: Amazon Prime Photos

#57

Post by dkrich »

zeeshanm wrote: post #37
spilk wrote: post #31

Didn't they launch this last year? http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/cloud-storage/amazon-pr...

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.

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

Re: Amazon Prime Photos

#58

Post by gramakri »

spilk wrote: post #31

Didn't they launch this last year? http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/cloud-storage/amazon-pr...

Not 100% sure but I think the last time around it was announced as free with prime - https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos ? This time around it looks like a standalone product.

Re: Amazon Prime Photos

#59

Post by SyneRyder »

alexandrerond wrote: post #7

Reminds me of Microsoft's unlimited storage adventure http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/3/9662414/microsoft-reduces-...

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...

Re: Amazon Prime Photos

#60

Post by mahyarm »

Veratyr wrote: post #20
cmurf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Amazon pricing is sufficiently cheap it probably comes with caveats similar to Glacier. Rather than as convoluted as Glacier they probably just have fixed retrieval amounts and rates, rather than the "get more or faster, pay more" Glacier sliding scale. Whereas Google is probably their nearline service. I have no idea what Microsoft's is. Backblaze also has $0.005/GB/mo which puts it in the $60/year for 1TB range…

Many home users have managed to saturate their (unusually fast) connections sending/receiving to Amazon Cloud Drive: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/32oniv/so_how_... And it doesn't have Glacier-like restrictions, at least in terms of retrieval delay. Nor does Backblaze. The difference with Backblaze is that it's only replicated within a single datacenter. If anything happens to that DC you're out of lu…

The typical pattern for photo users will be a large amount of upload at the start as they upload their collection, then occasional browsing of photos on the amazon website, which will be mostly smaller thumbnails. Rarely once in awhile users will request large originals. You will have an even smaller amount of people download their entire collection of originals.

With these patterns, you can make a system that puts everything on S3 at first, makes thumbnails and starts moving most things to glacier based on access patterns.

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