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Amazon pulls snouts from all-you-can-eat cloud storage buffet

Waaaaaaa... I need to join Prime for 'unlimited storage'? Oh. Just photos

Amazon has shuttered the flat fee-based unlimited cloud storage plan for Amazon Drive to all but paid-up members of the premium "Prime" service – who will only be able to store unlimited numbers of photos.

"Primers" pay $99/year in the States; £79 a year in the UK; €69 in Germany; and varying prices across the rest of Europe, where not all of the Prime services – which include delivery and movie-streaming services – are available.

The $12 eat-all-you-want Unlimited Photo option and the $60 Unlimited Everything Plan for nearly any type of file were introduced two years ago as competition between cloud titans heated up – Google got in on the act too.

As for Google, its Photos app is still unlimited (though you have to limit photo resolution to 16 megapix and vids to 1080p) but its everything plan costs $1.99 per month for 100GB and $9.99 a month (or $99.99/year) for 1TB of online storage.

Amazon Drive subscribers must now choose between 100GB for $11.99 per year, or 1TB for $59.99 – with up to 30TB available for an additional $59.99/TB.

Microsoft, on the other hand, will toss you a terabyte and Office 365 for £59.99/year ($69.99 in the US) for single user (one PC, a tablet and a phone) storage.

Redmond limited its "unlimited" offer to 1TB in late 2015, making Amazon the last of the gang to throw in the towel.

"Amazon no longer offers an unlimited storage plan," the company told customers. "You can stay on your unlimited plan until the end of your subscription... Prime Members' unlimited photo storage benefit is not changing."

Folk that sign up to Amazon Drive still get 5GB of storage for free, in line with Microsoft's OneDrive. Google gives you the first 15GB. ®

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