Amazon's new S3 Storage Service

Amazon just launched a new service, S3 - Simple Storage Service. It is a web service that allows you to store as much data as you like, with file sizes up to 5GB, and you just pay for the storage you use and the data transferred. Rates are very reasonable, too – $0.15/GB/month of storage, and $0.20/GB in data transferred.

This is pretty interesting. It gives developers the ability to create applications requiring significant storage space without having to make a huge upfront investment in equipment and expertise. Want to write your own Flickr? Go for it. Granted, it’s risky relying on a third party for a core part of your business, but you only need them until you get your million users and can get enough funding to build your own storage backend.

Google is apparently working on their own storage backend, Google Drive. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Nothing but good news for aspiring entrepreneurs, though.

via TechCrunch