Tag: cloud storage

Russia Has Two Months of Domestic Digital Storage Left

In an unexpected consequence of the sanctions it has faced, Russia only has two months of digital storage left domestically.

Companies have been pulling out of Russia at a record pace, led by some of the biggest names in the tech industry. According to BleepingComputer, that has put Russia in a precarious position, with only two months of digital storage left. With Microsoft, AWS, and Google Cloud all boycotting the country, Russia simply doesn’t have the resources to handle its domestic needs.

A number of possibilities are on the table, including Moscow leasing all remaining domestic storage, or taking over the leftover equipment from providers that have left the country.

As BleepingComputer points out, Huawei may be another option. The company initially suspended operations in Russia till March 26, 2022. However, given that Huawei is already sanctioned by the US and can’t be hurt anymore than it already has, it may see little to lose and much to gain by becoming Russia’s primary tech supply chain.

March 17, 2022
Microsoft Ending OneDrive Support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1

Microsoft has announced it is ending support for OneDrive on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1.

OneDrive is Microsoft’s cloud storage service. Each Microsoft 365 accounts comes with 1 TB of storage, making it a popular option for many users. The company is discontinuing support for the OneDrive desktop application on older versions of Windows, freeing up resources to focus on current versions and provide improved security.

Microsoft’s Ankita Kirti made the announcement in a blog post:

“In order to focus resources on new technologies and operating systems, and to provide users with the most up-to-date and secure experience, beginning January 1, 2022, updates will no longer be provided for the OneDrive desktop application on your personal Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 devices.

“Personal OneDrive desktop applications running on these operating systems will stop syncing to the cloud on March 1, 2022.

“After March 1st, 2022, your personal files will no longer sync and should be uploaded/accessed directly on OneDrive for web.”

November 9, 2021
Google One Now Offers 5TB Plan For $24.99 a Month

Google is now offering a middle-of-the-road storage plan for users, unveiling a 5TB plan for $24.99, filling a major hole in the company’s storage offerings.

Google changed the terms of its Photos storage in late 2020, ending its free, unlimited storage option. Users looking to replace that option have been turning to Google One. Paid plans start at 100GB for $1.99, 200GB for $2.99, 2TB for $9.99 and 10TB for $49.99.

The new option, first spotted by 9to5Google offers users a potential Goldilocks plan, offering a decent amount of storage at that ‘just right’ price.

September 12, 2021
Apple Takes on File Sharing Services With iCloud File Sharing

Apple has fired a shot across the bow of Dropbox, Box and others with the addition of iCloud File Sharing.

Steve Jobs famously tried to buy Dropbox years before the company went public, describing the business as a “feature, not a product.” In the ensuing years, Apple has slowly (some might say glacially) improved iCloud to better compete with dedicated file storage options, including offering a level of integration that other services struggle to match.

First announced at WWDC 2019, with the latest round of iOS, iPadOS and macOS updates, the File Sharing feature has finally debuted.

“With iCloud File Sharing, you can share folders and documents in iCloud Drive with other iCloud users,” reads Apple’s support site. “You and the people you invite can view and even work on your documents. The people who receive your invitation can click a link to download the shared folder or file from iCloud to any of their devices. Everyone views the same shared items. If you allow others to make edits, they can change the files and you see the updates the next time you open the files on your Mac.”

iCloud’s new feature includes all the necessary options to control who can do what with a given file or folder. While iCloud File Sharing won’t replace Dropbox, Box or others for heavy use, or in a business setting, it will likely cause many casual users to rethink their subscriptions to third-party services.

April 7, 2020
Need More Storage? Google and Microsoft Are Both Giving It Away Right Now

Are you running out of cloud storage? If so, two major providers are giving it away right now.

Microsoft is offering 100GB of OneDrive cloud storage for the next two years – and all you have to do is sign up for Bing Rewards.

Don’t know what Bing Rewards is? It’s pretty simple. Bing Rewards offers credits for everyday searches, and those credits can be used to redeem things like gift cards and electronics. If you sign up for it today, Microsoft will hand you 100GB of free storage.

It’s a pretty sweet deal if you’re looking for cloud storage, even if you have no intention of performing enough Bing searches to amass enough credits to buy things. if you can tolerate the occasional email, I’d say go for it.

If you’re already a Bing Rewards member, don’t worry – all you have to do is activate your bonus cloud storage.

Google’s not offering as much cloud storage, but you don’t have to sign up for anything to get it. In honor of Safer internet Day, Google is offering to permanently bump your Google Drive storage by 2GB.

All you have to do is complete Google’s security checkup by February 17. All that entails is verifying your recovery phone number, email, and taking a peek at your recent activity and giving Google the a-ok.

Free storage. Cool.

Images via Bing, Google

February 10, 2015
Amazon Prime’s Newest Perk Is Unlimited Photo Storage

Amazon Prime members have a new perk to help justify the annual fee – free, unlimited photo storage in the Amazon Cloud Drive.

Amazon is calling it Prime Photos, and it extends the free, unlimited storage offering previously available to Fire Phone owners to any Prime customer.

“This time of year in particular, families are capturing thousands of photos of holiday parties, family gatherings and opening presents,” said Greg Greeley, Vice President Amazon Prime. “With free unlimited photo storage, we’re providing one more reason for members to use Prime every day. Prime has always allowed members to conveniently save time and save money, and now with Prime Photos they can save memories too.”

Prime members can uploads photos for the web, iOS, Android, desktop, and of course, Amazon hardware. Amazon touts it as a “simple, secure” way to make sure you always have your precious photos backed up – and those photos will be stored as they are uploaded, in full resolution.

It’s important to note that this is free, unlimited photo storage. There’s no mention of videos.

Of course, Amazon isn’t the first to offer people a ton of cloud storage for little to no cost. But, like Amazon Prime Music, it’s just another perk to sweeten the deal that is Amazon Prime.

November 4, 2014
Cloud Storage Gets a Boost From the U.S. Government

For all the bad press that cloud storage has gotten in the wake of the recent celebrity nude photo hacking scandal, business is still booming. The consumer market for cloud storage hit record levels last year and is expected to grow further throughout the decade. Companies selling cloud storage for enterprise customers are expected to see even more growth, much of it coming from governments that need secure ways to store massive amounts of data.

Market research firm IDC this week released a new report showing that cloud services spending by the U.S. government is on the rise. The report shows that federal spending on cloud infrastructure is already 5% of the government’s total IT expenditures.

IDC Government Insights – cloud now represents about 5% of all IT spending by the federal government. http://t.co/LP1GqTG04d

— IDC (@IDC) September 16, 2014

According to IDC’s data the U.S. government is set to spend over $3 billion on cloud services during 2014. Though the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) predicts that cloud spending will hold steady or decrease slightly next year the IDC report foresees an increase to as much as $3.4 billion in cloud spending in 2015.

“Clearly cloud growth is ramping up in the U.S. Federal Government,” said Shawn McCarthy, a research director for IDC. “Spending went higher than originally predicted this fiscal year and we expect that the growth will continue into FY2015, even though the Office of Budget Management has indicated that it will cut back slightly on cloud spending. The main reason we believe that growth will continue is that cloud is proving to be a cheaper solution in some cases for government agencies. For that reason alone, some will make the switch, although that kind of commitment should not be made without a detailed return on investment analysis.”

IDC believes this increase in cloud spending is thanks to the work of the Federal CIO Council and the OMB. For five years now those agencies have been steering other government agencies toward cloud solutions for their IT systems.

Currently the U.S. government is spending more on software as a service (SaaS) solutions than on infrastructure as a service (IaaS). IDC predicts that IaaS could see more government spending over the long term.

September 17, 2014
Cloud Storage: Microsoft Offers 1TB To Every OneDrive For Business User

Cloud storage isn’t quite as expensive as it used to be. It used to cost hundreds of dollars just to store a terabyte via cloud solutions. Now Microsoft is joining others in lowering the cost barrier to record lows.

Microsoft announced this week that it will be offering one terabyte of cloud storage to every OneDrive for Business user. What makes this particularly exciting news is that this offer isn’t just one terabyte for the company as a whole. Microsoft will be giving every user within the company one terabyte of storage to use as they see fit. The company says this latest move will help companies unleash their employee’s potential as they will no longer be restricted to where they work.

OneDrive for Business is just one part of Microsoft’s cloud storage strategy going forward. Microsoft is also catering to businesses who use Office 365 ProPlus. The subscription service already gives businesses plenty of perks, including OneDrive storage. Now every employee or user in the organization or business will have access to 1TB of storage.

With this news, Microsoft’s cloud storage solution is looking like a mighty fine deal. After all, employees can do quite a bit with 1TB of cloud storage. If a business is thinking of transitioning over, Microsoft says that it will help those businesses migrate their data to OneDrive.

OneDrive for Business users will now get 1 TB of storage as part of their @Office 365 ProPlus plan. Learn more: http://t.co/Q5syGURRn3

— OneDrive (@onedrive) April 28, 2014

If you’re still on the fence, Microsoft has one more ace up its sleeve. The company says that it will be introducing some special introductory pricing for those who aren’t already OneDrive for Business subscribers. Normally, the service would cost companies $5 per user, but Microsoft will drop that price to $2.50 per user until September 2014. If you were already an Office 365 ProPlus subscriber, the cost is further reduced to $1.50 per user.

If you need any more info, be sure to check out the OneDrive for Business page.

Image via OneDrive Blog

April 30, 2014
Google Cloud Platform Gets Price Drop, New Features

Google announced on Tuesday at its Cloud Platform Live event that it is lowering prices on Cloud Platform, and launching cloud-based DevOps tooling, Managed Virtual Machines (VM) for App Engine, real-time Big Data analytics with BigQuery.

On the pricing, Google SVP of Technical Infrastructure Urs Hölzle says, “The original promise of cloud computing was simple: virtualize hardware, pay only for what you use, with no upfront capital expenditures and lower prices than on-premise solutions. But pricing hasn’t followed Moore’s Law: over the past five years, hardware costs improved by 20-30% annually but public cloud prices fell at just 8% per year. We think cloud pricing should track Moore’s Law, so we’re simplifying and reducing prices for our various on-demand, pay-as-you-go services by 30-85%.”

Compute Engine has been reduced by 32% across all sizes, regions and classes. App Engine gets a simplified pricing strtucture with significant reductions in database operations and front-end compute instances. Cloud Storage is priced at 2.6 per GB, which is roughly 68% less for most customers, according to the company. Finally, BigQuery on-demend prices have been reduced by 85%.

They’ve also launched sustained-use discounts, which start automatically when you use a VM for over 25% of the month. When you use a VM for a whole month, Google knocks off another 30% over the new on-demand prices for a total reduction of 53
53%.

“We’re also introducing features that make development more productive,” says Hölzle. “Build, test, and release in the cloud, with minimal setup or changes to your workflow. Simply commit a change with git and we’ll run a clean build and all unit tests; Aggregated logs across all your instances, with filtering and search tools; Detailed stack traces for bugs, with one-click access to the exact version of the code that caused the issue. You can even make small code changes right in the browser. We’re working on even more features to ensure that our platform is the most productive place for developers. Stay tuned.”

Managed VMs will let you run any binary inside a VM and turn it into part of your App Engine app, and App Engine will automatically manage them.

On real-time big data, Hölzle says, “BigQuery lets you run interactive SQL queries against datasets of any size in seconds using a fully managed service, with no setup and no configuration. Starting today, with BigQuery Streaming, you can ingest 100,000 records per second per table with near-instant updates, so you can analyze massive data streams in real time. Yet, BigQuery is very affordable: on-demand queries now only cost $5 per TB and 5 GB/sec reserved query capacity starts at $20,000/month, 75% lower than other providers.”

Compute Engine now supports Windows Server 2008 R2 in limited preview and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for everyone.

Image via Google

March 25, 2014
Microsoft Renames SkyDrive To OneDrive

Microsoft’s cloud storage platform – SkyDrive – got into a trademark dispute last year with European telecom Sky. Instead of fighting for its right to use the SkyDrive name, Microsoft opted to change it.

Microsoft announced this morning that SkyDrive will now be known as OneDrive going forward. Much like how the Xbox One’s name indicated that it would be the one place for all your entertainment needs, OneDrive’s name indicates that it’s your one place for all your storage needs.

Here’s the official explanation behind the name:

Why OneDrive? We know that increasingly you will have many devices in your life, but you really want only one place for your most important stuff. One place for all of your photos and videos. One place for all of your documents. One place that is seamlessly connected across all the devices you use. You want OneDrive for everything in your life.

As is the norm these days, Microsoft put together a little video to announce the name change:

So, will current SkyDrive users have to do anything when the service transitions to the new name? Not at all says Microsoft as current subscribers will find everything will remain the same, except the name. It should be noted that the change won’t come overnight as Microsoft is still in the process of transitioning everything over to the new name. If you want to be one of the first to get OneDrive, you can sign up here.

Image via skydrivevideos/YouTube

January 27, 2014
Personal Cloud Storage Hit 685 Petabytes This Year

In the past few years, the word “cloud” has become a buzzword for companies unsure of where their future markets are headed. Despite the word itself meaning whatever business want, the cloud storage industry has actually become a major tech segment – especially for the consumer market.

Market research firm ABI Research today released a new report showing that personal cloud storage data will reach 685 petabytes by the end of this year. This massive amount of data will continue to grow at an accelerated pace throughout the next five years, reaching 3,520 petabytes in 2018.

This data growth reflects the growth of individual cloud storage accounts. ABI estimates that active personal cloud storage accounts will number more than 1 billion by the end of 2013 – almost double the number seen just last year. The number of accounts is also set to grow quickly, with predictions topping 3.6 billion accounts within five years.

“Various factors are contributing to the rapidly increasing personal cloud uptake, including the consumerization of enterprise IT and multiple device ownership,” said Aapo Markkanen, senior analyst at ABI. “For storage needs, the most far-reaching driver is the expansion and improvement of camera technologies. In particular, cameras embedded in smartphones have generated large amounts of high-resolution image and video content. This trend toward ubiquitous cameras is only set to intensify, as camera capabilities gain traction in wearable computing and the Internet of Things.”

Though Markkanen believes hardware will drive cloud storage needs, the software behind the industry is set for a very competitive few years. Services such as Dropbox will have to compete with hardware manufacturers such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Samsung as they rope consumers into their own personal cloud storage solutions through free offers and OS-level integration.

December 13, 2013
Cloud Computing So Useful Yet So Misunderstood

Have you ever thought about downloading videos or music or keeping all of your photos on your computer only to change your mind because you don’t want to take up too much storage space? You aren’t alone, a lot of people have the same problem. Cloud Computing was created to help resolve this problem. Although it is available to pretty much anyone, many people do not use it because they do not understand how it works.

Cloud Computing isn’t an entirely new idea, but it has only recently gained popularity. It works by allowing users to use storage space on remote internet servers instead of their own devices. Not so confusing right? Then why do so many people avoid using it out of misconception? The problem could be the name of the concept.

When people think of clouds, they don’t think of storage space. They instead, thing of white puffy objects floating in the sky above them. Combine this association with remote serve storage and many people just can’t figure out what the two have in common. The Cloud got its name when a picture of a cloud was used to explain how it would work and how the service could be used with the Internet. While this may make sense to the people who create Cloud Computing, it just leaves everyone else confused.

So would changing the name of the service really make a difference? Adam King seems to think so. King named Spike TV and says that the name of something can really impact its popularity. He said, “A much better name would combine the concepts of high tech and reliability,” he said.

So what do you think? If you could rename the Cloud Computing service what would you call it and why?

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

September 21, 2013
Sony, Panasonic to Develop 300GB Discs

Sony and Panasonic have announced that they will be partnering up to develop a next-generation optical disc for professional use. The companies have set a goal of an optical disc with a recording capacity of “at least” 300GB by the end of 2015.

The joint announcement of the project states that the objective of the project is to expand each companies’ archive business. The market for archival solutions is expected to grow rapidly, and soon. The market is expected to be driven by cloud data centers, as well as the movie and broadcasting industries.

Optical discs are being targeted for the initiative for their physical properties, which include dust, water, humidity, and temperature resistance.

Sony and Panasonic both have worked on developing Blu-Ray disc technology, and both have offered archival solutions based on optical discs. Sony’s system offered cartridges holding up to twelve optical discs, each holding 25GB of data. Panasonic’s LB-DM9 products also used ‘magazines’ containing twelve optical discs, though each of theirs could hold up to 100GB.

August 5, 2013
Yandex.Disk Expands Its Cloud Storage Options

“Google of Russia” search engine Yandex is expanding the cloud storage options for users of its Yandex.Disk storage service. Yandex.Disk offers 20 GB of storage for free, but now users can add on 10 GB, 100GB, and 1 TB packages for an extra fee.

Each package is cheaper is you commit to a whole year. The 10 GB addition costs $1 per month or $10 for the whole year. The 100GB add-on will run you $5 per month or $50 for the year. The 1 TB package will cost you $30 per month or $300 for the entire year.

Yandex first launched Yandex.Disk back in April of 2012, and at that time is was invitation and Russian only. By September, the company had opened the cloud storage service up to everyone. The launch of Yandex.Disk was notable for another reason – the fact that the Russian search giant actually beat Google to the punch. It wasn’t for a couple of months after Yandex unveiled Disk that Google Drive launched.

As far as prices go, Yandex’s add-ons mesh with what Google Drive offers – except Yandex is cheaper when you start talking about 1 TB of storage. It’s also cheaper than Dropbox at that tier.

“Yandex.Disk now has about 12 million users worldwide,” said Natalya Khaitina, head of cloud services at Yandex. “For those of them who need a cloud storage space above 20 GB available for free, we have developed flexible terms for buying more storage space at affordable prices.”

If you opt for the pay-per-moth route, and let’s say you miss a month, your stored files don’t disappear or become inaccessible or anything. You can still access everything – you just can’t add any more to the cloud locker, obviously.

Yandex.Disk is currently available in 4 languages – English, Russian, Ukrainian, and Turkish. Yandex.Disk offer apps for Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

In other Yandex news, co-founder Ilya Segalovich passed away over the weekend after a battle with cancer.

July 30, 2013
Google Unifies Storage Across Gmail, Google+ And Drive, Upgrades Everyone To 15GB Of Storage

If you’re like me, you’ve probably already used up most of the free 5GB Google provides to Google Drive users. You may even be thinking about upgrading. You might want to hold off on that as Google is about to upgrade everybody for free.

Google announced today that its unifying storage across Gmail, Google+ photos and Google Drive accounts. To be specific, Google account holders now have 15GB to store all of their content across all three services. Here’s how Google describes it:

With this new combined storage space, you won’t have to worry about how much you’re storing and where. For example, maybe you’re a heavy Gmail user but light on photos, or perhaps you were bumping up against your Drive storage limit but were only using 2 GB in Gmail. Now it doesn’t matter, because you can use your storage the way you want.

Google is also updating its Google Drive storage page to better reflect how much data is being used across all three services. By hovering over the pie chart, it will bring up how much data each service is using:

As you can see in the above image, Google will soon be eliminating the option to upgrade to 25GB of storage for $2.49 a month. With the move to 15GB of unified storage, Google Drive users can upgrade to either 100GB for $4.99 a month, or 200GB for $9.99 a month.

This all sounds well and good, but what about Google Apps users? Google didn’t forget about its enterprise customers as it will be giving them 30GB of unified storage across Google Drive, Gmail and Google+ photos. As always, files created in Docs, Sheets and Slides won’t count against the limit, and only photos larger than 2048px will count towards the limit on Google+.

Regular Google account holders and Google Apps users will both start seeing the new unified storage system show up in their accounts over the coming weeks.

May 13, 2013
Catholic Deacon Arrested for Child Porn After Verizon Finds It on the Cloud

A deacon at the St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Fullerton, a suburb of Baltimore, has been arrested and charged with multiple child pornography counts after Verizon tipped authorities to materials stored on the company’s online cloud backup system.

67-year-old William Albaugh was arrested and released on $75,000 bond after police found underage porn images and videos on his Verizon cloud backup as well as on numerous thumb drives in his home. Police confiscated two storage units, a laptop, and an iPad as well.

According to police, there is no evidence that any children at St. Joseph’s church were victims.

Albaugh reportedly told police that he has been viewing child pornography since the 1970s, but was in no way involved with any of the porn’s creation.

Albaugh had been a deacon at the church since 1996, but the archdiocese has confirmed that he has been suspended.

The police were first tipped to Albaugh’s child pornography collection when Verizon notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Verizon said that they had detected the images and videos stored on his Verizon Online Backup and Sharing account.

[Baltimore Sun via Ars Technica]

March 4, 2013
Google Wants You To Pledge To Go Paperless

Google is part of a group of companies called the Paperless Coalition. There are seven companies in all including Google (Google Drive, specifically), HelloFax, Manilla, HelloSign, Expensify, Xero, and Fujitsu ScanSnap, and they want you to go paperless in 2013.

The coalition has started a campaign to “remove the need for ‘paper’ from paperwork,” and will be promoting this initiative throughout the year via email and other unspecified activities.

“According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the average US office worker uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year,” the coalition says on its about page. “In 2010, the amount of paper recovered for recycling averaged 334 pounds for each person living in the US, according to the American Forest & Paper Association.”

Google has its own blog post about its participation in the coalition.

“Google Drive makes it easy to keep all your stuff in the cloud and access it anywhere — so you don’t have to carry around paper copies wherever you go,” says product marketing manager Meredith Blackwell. “There are also other great apps that can help you get things done in the cloud – no printer required. This year, Google Drive is part of the Paperless Coalition, a group of organizations and products that help you live completely in a paper-free world. So whether you’re an expense reporter, invoice tracker, file hoarder, or note jotter, you can do it all without using paper.”

The Paperless2013.org site has a pledge that you can sign (electronically) and commit to going paperless, should you choose to do so.

January 2, 2013
Amazon Launches Cloud Drive Photos On Android

Despite some confusion as to what the cloud actually is, many Americans are turning to it for all their storage needs. There’s big money to be had for the players in the cloud storage business and Amazon is one of the biggest players. To continue its dominance, Amazon needs to move to more platforms and that’s just what it’s doing.

Amazon announced today that its Cloud Drive Photo app is now available on Android phones and tablets. Android users can sign in with their Amazon account and get access to 5GB of cloud storage immediately. The photos uploaded to the service can be accessed via any Android or Kindle device and PCs. Those who need more storage can upgrade to 20GB for only $10 a year.

“Customers rely on their mobile devices more and more to capture the memories that matter to them,” said Russell Dicker, Director of Cloud Drive. They are taking photos at birthday parties, soccer games, and kids’ recitals every day on their Android phones and tablets. The Cloud Drive Photos for Android app makes it simple to save these memories into Cloud Drive and have them automatically available on your Kindle Fire or Android Phone or Tablet.”

Android users who decide to go with Amazon for their cloud storage needs can look forward to the following features:
All Your Photos, Wherever You Go: Save your entire photo collection in Cloud Drive and your photos will be available to enjoy on your Kindle Fire, Android Phones and tablets, or with any web browser.
Share Photos Through Your Favorite Apps: You can select photos directly from your Cloud Drive and share them through Facebook, email and many other apps.
Save to the Cloud: It’s simple to save photos to your Cloud Drive – simply press and hold on a photo or album and select “Upload to Cloud Drive” to save directly to the Amazon Cloud from your device.
Beautiful Photo Display: Your photos are displayed in a horizontal mosaic or vertical grid view, optimized for the screen size of your Android device.

The Cloud Drive photo app is not yet available on iOS, but that should change soon. Readers point out that Amazon has brought all of its other apps to the App Store. At this point, it’s only a matter of time before iOS users can have more options for cloud storage.

November 1, 2012

You Can Now Share Files Via Amazon Cloud Drive

Amazon’s Cloud Drive service is only one of the many cloud storage services that are vying for your dollar. In fact, you could argue that Amazon doesn’t give you the best deal in terms of free storage. It does, however, get points for the new updates rolling out today.

Amazon sent out a notice today saying that Cloud Drive is now available in Italy and Spain. It was recently launched in the UK, Germany and France after a successful launch in the U.S. last year. Launching in new territories is always a plus, but Amazon isn’t stopping there.

“Cloud Drive makes digital file storage simple and secure – two very important features for customers who want to organize and manage precious files like photos,” said Russell Dicker, director of Cloud Drive for Amazon. “Now you never have to worry about losing important documents or photos to hard drive crashes, or not being able to access files that are spread between a number of devices. Cloud Drive stores digital files like photos, videos and documents all in one place that is easily accessible from any PC or Mac – and coming soon in Europe, Kindle Fire.”

U.S.-based Cloud Drive customers will now be able to share files with friends and family. It only applies to files that you’ve uploaded so purchased music and movies are out of the question. It does, however, make it easy to share family vacation pics if the whole family is using Cloud Drive.

While the sharing capability is only for U.S. users, Amazon is also introducing a new desktop app for Macs across all territories. Mac users will now be able to upload photos directly from iPhoto to Cloud Drive using the Cloud Drive Desktop App for Macs.

Just like in the U.S., European users will be treated to 5GB of free storage with Amazon Cloud Drive. Users can pay either £6 or €8 a year for 20GB of data. In the U.S., 20GB will cost you $10 a year.

These updates put Amazon’s Cloud Drive on a level playing field with Google Drive. Both services offer 5GB of free storage and both now allow you to share files with friends and family. It will be interesting to see if Google responds with new services and features to get ahead of Amazon in the coming weeks and months.

October 4, 2012