If you rely on Amazon Drive, a cloud-based storage platform that rivals Google Drive and iCloud, you are in for bad news. Amazon Drive is shutting down in 2023. The company has started sending out emails to users, giving the update well in advance for people to make a switch.
Amazon’s Cloud Storage Service Going Away!
Amazon suggests that the decision to shut down Amazon Drive is for it to focus on Amazon Photos for photo/video storage. So, probably, the company now wants to enhance the Amazon Photos experience so that it can rival the currently popular Google Photos and even Apple’s iCloud photo library.
You won’t be able to use Amazon Drive after December 31, 2023. File uploading will be stopped after January 31, 2023. The Amazon Drive app on Android and iOS will also be taken but this will happen much earlier; on October 31, 2022.
While photos and videos on Amazon Drive will automatically be saved to Amazon Photos, other files still need to be downloaded and moved to other cloud storage. The good thing is that there’s a lot of time for it. And if you are thinking of what to do next, you can check out our article on the best cloud storage services to make a decision.
The company advises storing the files locally and if there are size limitations, the Amazon Photos Desktop app is strongly recommended for it allows the download of around 5GB/1000 files at the same time. In case you want to, you can also cancel the Amazon Drive subscription by visiting the Manage Storage page on the Amazon Drive website. More details are available on an FAQ page and you can check it out to know more.
For those who don’t know, Amazon Drive was launched in 2011 and also included 5GB of free storage. It seems like it couldn’t gain much popularity as compared to other more-used platforms and as a result, is succumbing to the competition! It remains to be seen what new plans Amazon has for Amazon Photos. So, what are your thoughts on this decision by Amazon? Do let us know in the comments below.
