Amazon has revealed it is shutting down its cloud storage platform as part of another consolidation pressure from the tech giant.
The company sent emails to Amazon Drive customers to confirm that the service would be shut down later next year.
The move is part of Amazon’s quest for Amazon Photos, which will now become the central location for storing photos and videos.
Amazon Drive closure
“For the past 11 years, Amazon Drive has served as a secure cloud storage service for Amazon customers to back up their files,” the company said in an email to customers.
“On December 31, 2023, we will no longer support Amazon Drive to fully focus our efforts on storing photos and videos with Amazon Photos. We will continue to provide customers with the ability to securely backup, share and organize photos and videos using Amazon Photos. ”
Users will need to download all their files before the closing date, but existing Amazon users will be automatically saved to Amazon Photos.
The service will be fully operational until December 31, 2023, but the company says it will no longer support file transfers on the Amazon Drive website as of January 31, 2023.
She adds that the Amazon Photos app is now available for iOS, Android, and desktop users – and current Amazon Prime members get free, unlimited full-resolution photo storage and 5GB of video storage. Non-Prime subscribers get 5 GB of free storage for photos and videos.
New Amazon Photos members will be able to choose from a variety of monthly and yearly retention plans. The service allows users to view photos on Amazon devices such as Fire TV, Echo Show, and Fire tablets, while Family Vault allows Amazon Prime members to invite up to five members for “unlimited photo storage and collective photo gathering.” .