Amazon To Shelve Cloud Storage Service – The End Of Amazon Drive

There are several different major cloud services for data synchronization, with online filing services totaling many in number: Apple, for one, offers one such service in the form of iCloud Drive – although Google and Microsoft also include similar such offers in their own program. In March 2011, Amazon launched Amazon Drive. The service's key selling point was that users would only pay for the storage space they used at the start.

"Unlimited" Data Storage
Over the years, the company expanded its cloud storage service to include an "unlimited" option – allowing users to save as much data as they wanted to. However, it was discovered shortly afterwards that this wasn't completely the case: According to fine the fine print, the option only truly supported specific file types, was only for private usage, and the usual restrictions still applied entirely otherwise. Amazon discontinued its "unlimited" offer in the second half of 2017 in both the US and Canada.





Discontinuation To Encompass Multiple Phases
Amazon just announced the soon-to-occur discontinuation of Amazon Drive – without providing any further explanation. Despite a lack of statement on the part of the company itself concerning the matter, there are rumors that Amazon Drive wasn't exactly the most successful cloud storage service and only managed to win itself a few customers in sight of the overall market. As early as the next few weeks, Amazon will remove the iOS copy of Amazon Drive from the App Store and the Android version from the Google Play Store. It won't be possible for customers to upload new data to the service after January 31st 2023, and by December 31st 2023, the service will be completely shut down – with any stored data becoming entirely lost to the user. Thus, customers with their data still stored with the service should begin downloading and backing up said data now.

Amazon Photos To Remain Unaffected
Amazon has expressly indicated that Amazon photos will remain completely unaffected by the discontinuation of Amazon Drive. The company even recommends its customers who have used Amazon Drive to store their images migrate these Amazon Photos. However, Amazon Photos –unfortunately, does not support all types of data uploadable to Amazon Drive – making this recommendation an inadequate solution for many users.