back to article Dum dum dum - another cloud bites the dust (Adobe's photo cloud)

Adobe's announced it will close Revel, its Flickr-like cloudy photo storage service. The company's announced that the service will close its doors on February 23rd, 2016. Users are being herded towards encouraged to instead adopt Adobe's US$9.99/£8.57 a month Creative Cloud Photography offering. Adobe's telling Revel users …

  1. a_yank_lurker

    another bites the dust

    This is makes the one want to buy a very large hard drive and keep backups local.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: another bites the dust

      Should that not be TWO large HDD's. One copy of your beloved piccies is far too risky.

      I got an email from adoberevel.com about the closure. My spam filter thought that it was... well you know spam. I don't recall even knowing about this service before Adobe decided to pull the plug. Sigh. If no one know about it then it is hardly surprising that it failed then is it?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: another bites the dust

        "Should that not be TWO large HDD's. One copy of your beloved piccies is far too risky."

        That is what I do: all my data is on my computer's local HDD, which gets automagically synced to a 4GB RAID1 NAS, which in turn gets mirrored to an exclusive-to-NAS external HDD once a week using an AC power timer. The external drive is powered completely down in between the 1 week auto mirrors - you can't corrupt what isn't turned on.

        But since only the paranoid survive, that's only 3 copies of everything. I would like to mirror-the-mirror to cloud...if only a single one of them had proven to be trustworthy and, actually, useful, rather than Promise and Hype.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: another bites the dust

          "you can't corrupt what isn't turned on"

          Hey get that magnet back over here....oh, it's for the EMP ? how's that even....

    2. 0laf

      Re: another bites the dust

      I'm found myself starting to look at tape drives so I've got some offline storage.

      All hail the air gap.

  2. Hilmi Al-kindy

    Never was fully sold on the cloud concept

    Other than allowing easy synchronizing service between devices, I see no use for cloud services. Even the sync services never seem work properly. Most of the time they just fail miserably. They also expose some very personal items to what I would like to call a larger hacking foot print as your files are now constantly online, probably spread over a larger number of servers and are more likely to be targeted for hacking or just snooping by a nosy system administrator. A simple example is that Muslim women cover up in public but dress more freely in public. Having some private home photos on the internet as a serious intrusion on their privacy and is viewed akin to spying on them naked. So, here is a perfect example of doing nothing wrong but still not wanting other people to access your files. I'm sure there are other examples from other customs and religions of such annoying intrusions of privacy.

    Cloud services should be optional and not something mandatory. Any company that tries to make it such that I can not use their product unless I subscribe to a cloud service gets wiped off my list of software providers. I no longer use Adobe Photoshop, I don't use Office 365 and instead use full blown office, should Microsoft stop selling the full blown option I will just move onto some other alternative. Same goes for a few other services.

    I can understand going all out cloud based where the aim of the service is sharing data with others. For example, photo sharing websites. But some things are being pushed to the cloud simply to force the customers to pay for subscriptions and continually milk them instead of allowing them to pay one off and never have to pay again for the software. It is the second variety that I am particularly opposed to. It is particularly nasty in countries where there is no strong internet connection as what these companies are doing is practically cutting off a large segment of the market.

    I could rant about this non-stop, but I guess you get the general idea that I am not sold on the cloud, enough said.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Never was fully sold on the cloud concept

      Have an upvote from me. I share your reservations about Cloud.

      Clouds piss waster over everyone underneath. Once that's done they are poof! gone. What price your data then eh?

      I treat IT clouds in the same way. Nothing important is stored there. Temp stuff only for sharing.

      As for these subscription services.... As far as I'm concerned, they are evil. Keep on paying otherwise you lose access to your data or the software to access it. This is nothing more than a protection racket and if I tried that with say a retailer saying 'Pay me £1000 a week or else', I'd be behind bars pretty quick.

      So why not the likes of MS and Adobe eh?

    2. Tony S

      Re: Never was fully sold on the cloud concept

      " A simple example is that Muslim women cover up in public but dress more freely in public.

      I think that you meant "...dress more freely in private". But your point is still well made. There are many other photographs that are perfectly acceptable as a private possession that people might not want (for many reasons) to be shared with world + dog. For example, my niece is highly reluctant to make pictures of her children available, because her father is a twerp and being a bit of a PITA.

      We are told that cloud computing is cheaper and more reliable; so far, every time that I've had to deal with such a setup, the costs were higher than originally proposed and the service level is never as good. For example, we've had 2 major mail outages in 4 months, both lasting 3 - 5 hours; a total of 3 outages since we started 12 months ago. When I managed it in house, I didn't get that level of service failure during a 3 year period.

      As for the security aspect, the evidence would seem to be clear that despite all of the protestations to the contrary, they don't actually offer the level of protection that they suggest.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Never was fully sold on the cloud concept

        I do have a cloud success story - my wife broke her phone. She thought she lost all her photos, fortunately they were in the cloud and the photos reappeared on her new phone.

        Now if there was an easy way to replace the "cloud" with my own server, I'd be happy.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Never was fully sold on the cloud concept

          'Now if there was an easy way to replace the "cloud" with my own server, I'd be happy.'

          1. Make your choice of several models of NAS boxes

          2. Buy one

          3. Plug it in

        2. andyace

          Re: Never was fully sold on the cloud concept

          Owncloud? runs on a pc or Nas or even a raspberry PI with a USB disk plugged in

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Never was fully sold on the cloud concept

            Good choices to replace the cloud (I use an RPi for local sharing, and Linode for remote), but what about ease of use on the client? That's where the problem lies.

            It's a shame that these clouds aren't standardised, otherwise I could just point the DNS to my server.

        3. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

          Re: Never was fully sold on the cloud concept

          > the "cloud" with my own server

          Easy - Owncloud. I have it running in an instance at home and all the content I generate on my phone gets automatically uploaded..

    3. Test Man

      Re: Never was fully sold on the cloud concept

      Who says you're being forced to use "cloud" though? Your example of Office 365 doesn't wash - it's still a local copy that is installed - the only difference is that it checks the subscription over the internet once in a while. You're not forced to save the files in the "cloud" either, you can save it anywhere you like as you have always been allowed to.

      Same with Adobe Creative Cloud suite. We have it here in the office but it's exactly the same as the usual, and we save the resulting files anywhere we like.

      Anyone who thinks that you have to embrace the "cloud" is misguided. You can continue to save locally as always. Even if you have something like OneDrive or Google Drive installed the files are kept locally and SYNCED online. Cloud is not and has never been the MAIN way to work, it's just an additional backup kind of service.

      1. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

        Re: Never was fully sold on the cloud concept

        The problem with applications in the cloud is that you have no control over them. At the moment you have the choice as to whether you want to move to the latest version of say Word or Excel, but by going 365 there is no choice. How many times do you read in various forums "such and such program got updated, caused problems, or didn't like the new interface, so I went back to an older version"? Will you be able to do that with a Cloud-based App? I doubt it.

    4. Jan 0 Silver badge

      Re: Never was fully sold on the cloud concept

      Concept?

      It's not a cloud, it's just somebody else's computer!

      If you want to look after your stuff, use your own hardware! Or maybe a friends' hardware. Do you trust strangers? What do you tell your kids?

  3. Teiwaz
    Coat

    Cloudburst

    Another 'this is definitely the future' prediction now clearly no more accurate than one featured in Tomorrows World in the 1970's.

  4. Mark 85

    Photo archives on the web... err.. cloud*.

    They've been closing on a regular basis ever since Zing** (one of the first as I recall) went under. I'll be waiting for the howls of agony if Flickr is ever shuttered. Some folks will never learn...

    * I heard a higher up who should have known better several years ago touting the benefit of the "cloud" as this wondrous place to store stuff forever and if one place closes or goes down, your data is still out there.

    ** I think they're back but it's just the name, not the same company.

  5. P. Lee

    But...

    It's provided by a tier 1 profitable company! Why would it ever go away?

    /cautionary snark

  6. Mage Silver badge
    Pirate

    It's just proprietary hosting

    It's just proprietary hosting.

    Cloud is only "useful" for collaboration (and files all saved elsewhere) and hosting web sites that don't justify a co-located server.

    Eventually there will only be AWS, Google, Azure. Perhaps also IBM and Oracle. Then it will get expensive, except when like Facebook or Google search it makes money some other way.

    Unless Google / MS / Amazon buys Flickr off Yahoo (It's Yahoo?) it's doomed. Remember Geocities? No logical reason to close them. Yet they did. I can't see Yahoo surviving.

    Adobe was always expensive. But now that they want to only rent everything they're even more expensive.

    What is the real security and backup used by any Cloud Provider?

    If Banks and commerce outsource to "Cloud" it will only need one bad AV update with a false positive or a badly done patch to end civilisation. Most of the shops here can't even take cash without their computers and communications running.

  7. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Cloudy situation reminds me of streaming services

    Cloud "provider" offers new service, gets attention, users decide to sign up, service ramps up, costs ramp up, service maintained for a while, investors decide not enough revenue generated, service gets killed, users are left with nothing.

    Whether the service was free or paid for makes hardly any difference.

    I do agree with the name though : cloud. As solid as the ones in the sky. Trust it as far as you can walk on it and you'll be fine.

  8. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Remember, it's someone else's computer...

    ...to do with as they like, including switching it off.

  9. Cab

    Bit of basic maths seems to be the issue here.

    Honestly all of this seems less about cloud and more about tech companies failure to understand the implications of the term "unlimited" (again). First it was internet access with dialup, then it was data on mobile, now it's cloud storage.

    Question tech company, is the service / offer you are providing actual free for you to operate (zero pounds, zero fractions of a pence, including maintenance) ? If not then you can't afford to offer an infinite amount of it.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Bit of basic maths seems to be the issue here.

      'Honestly all of this seems less about cloud and more about tech companies failure to understand the implications of the term "unlimited" (again)'

      I suspect the thinking was that "as H/W gets cheaper all the time we'll be able to add capacity faster than the customers can use it".

      Spot the flaw in that.

  10. Loofted

    Head in the Clouds or in the Sand

    Over the last forty + years I have watched the growth and evolution of the IT industry – ever expanding technologies (hardware and communications), applications (software), operating systems (Windows, Unix and others) and of course the “Internet”. This growth being fuelled by the determination to continuously improve the technology and the drive to sell more products, reduce costs, increase efficiency and constantly improve the ways of delivering these improvements to industry and commerce. The result, a huge worldwide reliance upon IT infrastructure, its benefits and its costs and for those who are supplying the goods and services that deliver these benefits – the generation of huge profits.

    So from the seventies to the current decade, momentous IT infrastructure changes have been made, wonderful things have happened and wonderful benefits have been and are being delivered and it seems that this journey will continue unabated into the future.

    So everything is “Rosy” – or is it?

    From where I sit, I see a problem growing that will eventually – if left unchecked - cause catastrophic changes to not only the world of IT, but to worldwide politics and to those who aspire to have the power in controlling what we do and who is doing it.

    Going back to mainframe computing in the sixties – whoever owned the mainframe owned the data processing and had central control of not only the hardware but also the data and what was done with it and to get what you needed you had to do what you were told. However this control was only local to the company who owned the mainframe.

    Through the seventies and eighties there was a gradual evolution away from the central control of data processing towards the electronic office and the world of workstations. This opened the way for distributed computing / data processing and business and private users were able to purchase their own software to deliver what they needed. Thus giving the business and private users local control of their computing requirements and more importantly they owned their software.

    For the next 15 or so years the purchasing and maintenance of software and services from software providers was the standard business model and the purchaser had the right of ownership to the software.

    Moving on - as business and private users became more and more reliant upon the software they were using – the large software providers began changing their business model and stopped selling their products, rather, they began selling licences to use the products and retained ownership of the products themselves. At a stroke they took away any rights of ownership of their products from their customers and introduced the right for them to prevent their customers from using the product. At this time I did not see any meaningful resistance to this change even though I believe it is fundamental to what may happen in the future.

    Business will always seek to do things better, faster and cheaper and sell their resulting offerings to the marketplace and in the 2000 twenties it was postulated that the purchase and maintenance of computer hardware, data storage and communications infrastructure was an unnecessary expense to business and that the big players in the software and services industry could provide these services to business at a cost that was lower than the cost of ownership (Outsourcing / Cloud Computing).

    To some CEO’s this was seen as a golden opportunity to drastically reduce their capital costs (hardware and heads) and improve their company’s share price and their own credibility. Given this situation it is understandable that any downside to the arrangement would be difficult to recognise; but what had actually happened? Complete control of a company’s hardware, software, communications and data (security and access) had been ceded to another (remote) company with no allegiance to the original company’s business or its customers to save money – and all this being replaced by a piece of paper outlining a service level agreement. Once a business has changed to this model how easy / possible is it to change back? If something looks too good to be true it probably is. Some might say that this would be an unacceptable business risk.

    My fear is that we could move to a position where a few large players in the computing services industry could be providing such services to many companies worldwide (including Governments and Local Governments) and effectively controlling their IT infrastructures, communications and data and thus their businesses and because of this be able to wield undue influence. I believe this is an accident waiting to happen and waiting in the wings is another; will the vast amounts of data they control and maintain be truly secure?

    Is the whole issue of Outsourcing / Cloud computing a Wolf in Sheep’s clothing?

    • Are we buying into something that will take over the control of our businesses (life)?

    • Will our businesses be at the mercy of communication outages or the priorities of service providers which may or may not be in-line with those of the businesses they support?

    • Will the power of the service providers become greater than the democratic process?

    An Old Contractor

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Head in the Clouds or in the Sand

      "service level agreement"

      Is it soft strong and absorbent? Otherwise not much use...

    2. clatters
      WTF?

      Re: Head in the Clouds or in the Sand

      Excellent summary Loofted.

      I was asked by some non-IT friends to explain the evolution of the cloud as they couldn't see how it evolved...

      it's magic was one answer

      but then I explained that in the beginning the hard disk sat inside their desktop PC making loud whirring noises. Then we had the LAN, then NAS/SAN and now we have the cloud. All we have done (us IT folk) is make the data more and more remote from the user/owner of the data.

      Good idea huh?

      Another old contractor

  11. wyatt

    I have just tried to logon to my Flick account, not having used it for a good few years. First thing it asks for is my Yahoo email address.. I don't have one!?

    Guess that's all gone then..

    *I used Flickr when I was with BT and BT provided a address via Yahoo. Seems that as I'm no longer a customer I don't have a Flickr account and my alternative account details haven't been saved. Good job Flickr was the backup..

  12. myhandler

    What gets me is that the public think 'cloud' is something special - something cool and modern. Nope, it's just a boring bunch of servers.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Never put yourself in a position where some other bastard can pull the rug out from under you on a whim.

    I always thought that was rule 1 of IT.

    1. Just An Engineer

      It is the 1st rule if IT, but IT does not control the Bean Counters and they want you out at the first opportunity, in order to "reduce the cost of IT". Since most of these fools still see IT as a cost center and not the keeper of the family jewels.

      1. Wensleydale Cheese

        What short memories

        the Bean Counters ... want you out at the first opportunity, in order to "reduce the cost of IT"

        The whole reason for my biggest project in the early 1980s was that the customer wanted to get away from the high costs of using a third party data processing service.

        Just see what happens once the "cloud providers" think they have got you well and truly locked in.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not surprised here

    ImageShack is, also, pulling its free accounts: starting in January 2016, all user content will be deleted unless you sign up for a paid account.

    And then they wonder why everyone in the know, considers "cloud" to be "joke"

    Also, Waula was more than image sharing, you could not only post documents and other content but the account could be linked to your LaCie NAS device, allowing single-point integration and document synchronization. And it was encrypted, too, with desktop as well as Android & iOS app access. It is a shame that one went - the encryption aspect was worthwhile.

  15. G_O_D
    FAIL

    Country Boy

    Living out in the country. On satellite. Usage capped. And freelancing for local charities, etc., I am stuck with older version of photoshop. Renting to use it over very limited internet just doesn't make sense.

    1. Joe 35

      Re: Country Boy

      Renting to use it over very limited internet just doesn't make sense.

      ======

      You woudn't be doing that though.

      You would be using it locally. The 'cloud' aspect is a misnomer, all it means in this case is, every now and again it checks you've paid your dues. All the photos and the app still reside on your computer.

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