Just how big is Amazon Web Service's (S3) Simple Storage Service? Well, it holds 905 billion objects, and it's growing by a billion per day, the company says.

In a blog post, the company outlines the rapid growth of S3.

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In the fourth quarter of 2006, S3 held 2.9 billion objects. By 2008 it was up to 340 billion, and by 2010 it had 262 billion. Last year, it grew to 762 billion objects, and today's announcement pegs it at 905 billion. Even that number is set to increase rapidly into the future, if objects continue to be stored at the 1 billion per day rate.

AWS says it handled 650,000 requests per second for the objects, a figure that increases "substantially" during peak times.

Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social media. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.

This story, "Amazon releases staggering storage figures" was originally published by Network World .