Comment by electroly

Isn't this a benefit you'd trivially get just by using .zip? I pull individual files out of large .zip archives in S3 using HTTP range requests; works exactly as you'd expect. You know the zip header is at the end of the file, and the header tells you the offset and length of the compressed entry data so you can request the range. Two requests if you've never seen the .zip before, one if you've got the zip header cached.