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Amazon reduces S3 prices, because $0.11 is too much to charge

By | February 7, 2012, 2:48am PST

Summary: If you’re using a ton of S3 space, your bill’s going down next month. Even if you’re not using a ton of space, your bill is probably going down. Can’t beat that with a stick.

I have often written about how innovative Amazon is as a company. It’s probably the online company I respect the most, from its amazingly valuable (to my family, anyway) Prime service to its works-on-all-devices Kindle format.

I haven’t really talked much about one area where Amazon innovates, its S3 online storage service. S3 is a service that essentially virtualizes storage and then makes it accessible through an API. As a result, S3 is a cloud storage “device” that can (and has been) baked into many applications as an alternative to storing things locally.

The thing is, S3 is also quite inexpensive. Certainly, as you scale up into the holy-cowabyte level, it gets costly, but for many of us, the amount Amazon charges us for this service is astonishingly low.

For example, one of the servers I back up (it’s got a couple of gigabytes or so) cost me all of $0.11 last month. Seriously. Here’s the payment notice.

It’s astonishing. Now, I’m always a little concerned that I’ll configure something incorrectly, or read something and not quite interpret it right, and one day I’ll get a monster bill, but that hasn’t happened yet — and I actually pretty much doubt it will.

Note to literalists (you know who you are!): The title of this post is meant to be sarcastic. I don’t believe $0.11 is too much to charge. I think it’s an amazingly good deal for what I get.

One reason I feel pretty secure that I’m safe with my 11-cent bill from Amazon is that the company today announced a 12% to 13.5% reduction in prices, depending on your usage pattern.

Seriously. Reduction. Here’s the chart.

Now, ask yourself this: when was the last time your power company or your cable company wrote you a note and let you know they were reducing prices because they were innovating and driving down prices? Yeah, I know. Crazy, eh?

So there you go. If you’re using a ton of S3 space, your bill’s going down next month. Even if you’re not using a ton of space, your bill is probably going down. Can’t beat that with a stick.

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Topics

S3 Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Storage, Unified Computing, Workload Optimization, Hardware, David Gewirtz

David Gewirtz, Distinguished Lecturer at CBS Interactive, is an author, U.S. policy advisor, and computer scientist. He is featured in The History Channel special The President's Book of Secrets.

Disclosure

David Gewirtz

At various times during his adult life, David has voted for both Democrats and Republicans, and has been disappointed by both. He is deeply disturbed by how partisanship has come before patriotism in America, which gives him the freedom to pick on both sides.

David is a frequent guest on TV and radio stations across America and can usually be heard or seen on-the-air at least once a week. He writes weekly commentary and analysis for CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 and has been interviewed by Fox News, CNN, various ABC and NBC affiliates, and Canada’s Global TV. He has been a featured guest on National Public Radio and has also been featured on Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty where his commentaries on technology, industry, and emerging nations have been broadcast into 46 countries (all in their own unique translations).

David is the executive director of U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute, a nonprofit research and policy organization. He is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism & Security Professionals, a columnist for The Journal of Counterterrorism and Homeland Security and a special contributor to Frontline Security Magazine. He is a member of the FBI’s InfraGard program, the security partnership between the FBI and industry. David is also a member of the U.S. Naval Institute and the National Defense Industrial Association, the leading defense industry association promoting national security.

David is an advisory board member for the Technical Communications and Management Certificate program at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He is also a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension.

David’s “day job” is as publisher and editor-in-chief of ZATZ publishing, an online publisher of technical magazines. Other than than his ownership stake in Component Enterprises, Inc. (the parent company of ZATZ), David has no additional industry investments.

ZATZ has many advertisers who do, in part, provide for David’s lush income and extravagant lifestyle. Most of them are IBM and Lotus aftermarket suppliers, some of them make goodies for Microsoft Outlook, and a few make all sorts of strange mobile devices and add-on products. David has been a regular judge of the IBM Awards, but has no formal financial interest in or with IBM.

Because the ZATZ online magazines often review products, David and ZATZ are sent an overwhelming stream of unsolicited, silly, and often useless products to review. Because they’re such a pain to track and ship back, these products often wind up in a dumpster or fill up the corner of a large closet. Although David has no plans to review products in connection to his ZDNet blog, if he does do a product review, he will disclose any relationship completely in that posting.

Both through ZATZ and independently, David derives a small income through various advertising and sales relationships with Amazon.com and Google. These are minor relationships and they will not impede his willingness or ability to chastise either company should they deserve it.

David has many other business relationships, but none of them relate to anything he covers in his ZDNet blog. David does have a bit of the sales-guy bug and if he’s not doing a sales deal with someone at least once a month, he goes through withdrawal. He has a number of consulting clients, but none of them relate to anything he covers for ZDNet (and if they ever do, he will either disclose that fact, or decline to write about them).

Back in the 1980s, David held the unusual title of “Godfather” at Apple. He has written and published 40 incredibly simplistic applications for Apple’s iPhone.

Although David is forbidden to disclose the terms of his iPhone developer agreement, he isn’t drinking the Apple Kool Aid, will never be confused with a metrosexual, and feels free to mock Apple, and Apple users, any time the occasion permits, on alternate Tuesdays, or if he’s bored.

Biography

David Gewirtz

In addition to hosting the ZDNet Government and ZDNet DIY-IT blogs, CBS Interactive's Distinguished Lecturer David Gewirtz is an author, U.S. policy advisor, and computer scientist. He is featured in The History Channel special The President's Book of Secrets, is one of America's foremost cyber-security experts, and is a top expert on saving and creating jobs. He is also director of the U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute as well as the founder of ZATZ Publishing.

David is a member of FBI InfraGard, the Cyberwarfare Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism & Security Professionals, a columnist for The Journal of Counterterrorism and Homeland Security, and has been a regular CNN contributor, and a guest commentator for the Nieman Watchdog of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He is the author of Where Have All the Emails Gone?, the definitive study of email in the White House, as well as How To Save Jobs and The Flexible Enterprise, the classic book that served as a foundation for today's agile business movement.

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Why still to use GoogleDrive over Amazon S3?
drorharari 28th Apr
What might those services be? I was using GoogleDocs storage now GoogleDrive (same 20$/year for 80Gb) and I get quite a number of services around pictures with Picasa (syncing to all my devices) and am able to view my documents from everywhere. Sure, for high sensitivity documents or very private stuff others are probably offer better options but Amazon is not there and for the bulk of files, GoogleDrive is simple, effective and low cost.

Same goes for Carbonite - it is after all a backup service which neither S3 nor GoogleDrive are (though some 3rd party could/did build one on top of them)
View in thread
0 Votes
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I don't get it.
ron.cleaver@... 7th Feb
The chart seems to show there is no way you could be charged 11 cents for "couple of gigabytes or so."
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RE: Amazon reduces S3 prices, because $0.11 is too much to charge
MisinformedDNA 7th Feb
@ron.cleaver@... It is $0.14GB per month up until you hit 1TB, then you hit the next price level. So that means he's using less than 1GB (.11 / .14). As cool as I think Amazon and S3 services are, it's misleading for him to claim that he backed up a server for 11 cents. Most people have more than 1GB of pictures alone and usually more.
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CFOs love AWS
Dietrich T. Schmitz * Your Linux Advocate Updated - 7th Feb
Why?

If you've done your risk management and using cloud is ok for your organization, then you benefit from:

o Shift of fixed assets to the cloud
o Elimination of assets from balance sheet
o On-demand resource allocation, use it, then turn off or dispose of
o No more IT asset amortization
o No more IT asset tracking for assets moved to cloud
o Pure Monthly 'predictable' expense driven operation

Not bad if you ask me.
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RE: Amazon reduces S3 prices, because $0.11 is too much to charge
zforray@... 7th Feb
While $.11/GB/Month seems/sounds small, it can be expensive for larger quantities, over a year. I have been looking for a "cloud based backup solution" for a church with 120GB to backup. Annual cost with Amazon would be $158 (.11*120*12). Acronis offers 500GB for $75/year or $.0125/GB/Month ($75/12/500).
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RE: Amazon reduces S3 prices, because $0.11 is too much to charge
jrubin99 7th Feb
@zforray@...

What backup application are you using to store to the cloud?
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RE: Amazon reduces S3 prices, because $0.11 is too much to charge
ryanmc 7th Feb
@zforray@... Just use Carbonite. For $59 a year you get unlimited online backup.
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Google storage costs less
drorharari 7th Feb
Google is at $20 for 80Gb per year compared with Amazon's new $120 for 80Gb per year. A 1/6 of the price...

This is not to say Amazon's service is not valuable, it is but mostly as a storage for organizations. They are very innovative there but there is definitely a pressure from below...

/d
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And this, folks, is precisely why Amazon is lowering its S3 prices. It has
baggins_z 7th Feb
nothing to do with innovation and everything to do with them being undercut by competitors.
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RE: Amazon reduces S3 prices, because $0.11 is too much to charge
notsofast 7th Feb
@drorharari I might understand using Amazon or Google if you're a company, but as a consumer, i'd probably go with Carbonite or some other service. If I wanted to back up 1TB of data on Amazon, it'd cost $125/month. You could buy a few hard drives and just back up to those. Move your first back up offsite (say your safety deposit box), and then backup daily to another drive (or 2). Once a month take your most recent full backup and put it in the bank.
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RE: Amazon reduces S3 prices, because $0.11 is too much to charge
Gisabun 8th Feb
@drorharari : Ever thought that google doesn't offer some services that Amazon offers that can be valuable? Maybe that's why there is a big difference in price. Sort of comparing a Ferrari with a Celica.
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Why still to use GoogleDrive over Amazon S3?
drorharari 28th Apr
What might those services be? I was using GoogleDocs storage now GoogleDrive (same 20$/year for 80Gb) and I get quite a number of services around pictures with Picasa (syncing to all my devices) and am able to view my documents from everywhere. Sure, for high sensitivity documents or very private stuff others are probably offer better options but Amazon is not there and for the bulk of files, GoogleDrive is simple, effective and low cost.

Same goes for Carbonite - it is after all a backup service which neither S3 nor GoogleDrive are (though some 3rd party could/did build one on top of them)
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RE: Amazon reduces S3 prices, because $0.11 is too much to charge
Jimster480 7th Feb
Well depending on what your backing up and what the size is for a $2GB backup I pay basically nothing because I just have it backed up on my webhost in a folder that isnt shown online with all encrypted passwords on the files.
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RE: Amazon reduces S3 prices, because $0.11 is too much to charge
freakqnc 7th Feb
I must agree with the statements made here... while Amazon may be convenient in some instances, it's far from being something that consumer will find a bargain (see the example by user "zforray" about the 120GB backup solution).

As stated by others there are several options for paid/free services that are much more affordable whether it's backup or online storage, photos, videos, documents, etc. carbonite and google were a couple mentioned.

More options are out there (free/paid) that makes Amazon not the first choice for many. Of course one must choose according to needs and principles. Some users who dislike a specific company would never store a single bit on that company's servers, but that doesn't make it any less useful to others.

That said, services such as Picasa for instance, offer free photos & videos storage up to 1GB, which becomes unlimited when subscribing to Google Plus (some caveats apply) that allows free photos, videos, hosting no matter whether content is or not shared with anyone.
That's a viable solution for many who want to keep photo albums accessible to friends and family living abroad or across the street/hallway, without having to pay for extra hosting services, setup complex NAS and dynamic DNS, set up a PHP hosted gallery, or upload photos to facebook where will be kept forever even after deletion (as covered by another ZDNet article).

So what are the caveats? Storage remains unlimited without eating into the 1GB max allowance as long as:
- videos will not exceed 15 minutes in length,
- photos will not exceed 2048x2048 pixel in dimension,
- documents created in Google Docs and converted files won't count towards 1GB doc storage, but docs have specific limitations which you can read in more details on Google help pages

All in all just minimal limitations IMO, especially for average non-professional use.
To this we need to add free email space of over 7GB and after the launch of Google music service, users are now able to store up to 20,000 songs (average encoding 128kbps). About songs storage, considering that the average song is about 4 min. this translates into storing 80,000 minutes of music which at 128kbps is 1MB/min, for a total of roughly 80GB of storage. Enough to store ~1,333 hours, or 55.5 days, almost 2 months of uninterrupted music playback. I uploaded about 9,200 songs so far which is ~35GB of data... free.

When in need of more space for photos and videos Google offers a rather simple storage pricing model which it's priced at $0.25 per GB per year (not month!) whether getting 20GB for $5/yr or 16TB for $4096/yr.

The amount could then would make for an even more sarcastic article title than the current one since the monthly cost per each GB ends up being 2?? which is the same for all storage tiers since $5/yr divided by 20GB = $0.25/yr per 1GB, which consequentially means $0.25/12months = $0.02083 or about 2??/GB/mo.

That makes 11?? look very costly since it's 5.5 times more expensive!

Obviously cost analysis aside it's not all about money and other factors will be involved in choosing the solution that best fits each case, that will include features offered by services, ease of use, scalability, reliability, personal preferences, company reputation, etc. Note also that not all is error free with google free services like Picasa for instance so "caveat emptor".

Beside the described offering from Google there are other options users may consider:

- mediafire Unlimited free or premium paid accounts of $9/mo to $49/mo,
- ADrive 50GB free storage for personal use only,
- 4shared 10GB free plan (or 100GB premium at $9.95/mo and $6.5/mo prepaid yearly),
- sugarsync free 5GB storage (or or premium paid accounts up to 500GB at $399.99/year... don't you hate those 99.99 when advertising prices it's so 1960s! ;D),
- Box free 5GB ($15/user/mo and custom unlimited - must call),
- OpenDrive 5GB free (up to $250/yr for 1TB max 7 user access + custom plans),
- Dropbox 2GB free (up to 100GB for $19.99/mo and 1TB+ for teams $795/year for first 5 users and $125/year for each additional user),
- Justcloud no free plan, but unlimited plans are $9.99/mo or 4.95/mo for 2 years,
- mypcbackup a repacking of justcloud. Site is a copy, different logo, same pricing,
- zipcloud another copy of justcloud offers a laughable 15MB free storage on 14 day trial. Paid accounts are 4.95/mo for unlimited storage.

There will be few more option and the above are just a few examples of what's available.

Note:
- Mozy com has no free offers, only paid up to $9.99/mo for 125GB and 3 computers
- 5GB free iCloud storage does not qualify due to its being restricted to Apple ecosystem when it comes to content other than photos)
0 Votes
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One word: CrashPlan
SES21 8th Feb
You owe it to yourself to check out CrashPlan. It's possible you could take advantage of your friends & family's off-site locations to back up for free (after the purchase of a few HDs). Restore is probably much quicker than from the cloud, too, since you could likely just go pick up the backup drive!

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