Microsoft OneDrive changes means downgrades all round

[HEXUS]

No more unlimited storage, free storage down from 15GB to 5GB, no more camera bonus.

Read more.

[bridges009]

This doesn't make sense if it's really because of small minority of people who had the temerity to think "unlimited" meant there was no limit on what they could store. Since it seems the average user stores around 5GB (which happens to be how much I'm using out of 1TB on my Office subscription) a cap of 1TB or half that even would effectively be 'unlimited' for 99% of people. OneDrive is so slow I can't imagine wanting to store anywhere near 1TB on it.

[crossy]

I'm hoping for a U-turn or amendment to some of the proposed changes, but it looks like I have plenty of storage for the next 15 months thanks to a 'Bing Bonus' that I can't even remember getting. The OneDrive free user capacity slashing to 5GB provides even less storage than when it was launched (7GB), and competitors like Google Drive offer a base free level of 15GB of cloud storage.

Like you I'm hoping that this knee-jerk reaction gets some rethinking. The most obvious thing I'd want rethought is the 15GB uplift for camera roll. That seems like a reasonable use (sharing photos) and 15GB isn't exactly going to break the bank

We're no longer planning to offer unlimited storage to Office 365 Home, Personal, or University subscribers. Starting now, those subscriptions will include 1TB of OneDrive storage.

News to me that Office 365 Home had unlimited storage - when I checked the "Family Pack" was five users, each with 1TB. Which, for the money that Microsoft were asking for a subscription, seemed like a pretty good deal.
EDIT: I just checked and the Plans option still has this "Special Offer" available:

Office 365 Home includes 1 TB of OneDrive storage for each household member (up to 5) and the latest Office applications for 5 PCs or Macs and 5 tablets.

[cptwhite_uk]

I have 18Gb free storage on my Dropbox account (thanks to referrals), and I subscribed to One Drive for the 200Gb $3.99/month option

200Gb seemed like a nice amount to store my music and photos. But given I'm using 60Gb currently I think I might switch to Google Drive for half the cost and half the storage (still plenty of room for the foreseeable future).

Given Microsoft's recent financial results have been boosted by their cloud storage options this just seems like they going all "apple" in how they're pricing themselves.

My experience with OneDrive has been okay, but it's no dropbox and with Google's recent improvements to it's photo browsing experience I see very little reason to stay with Microsoft. That's compounded by the fact I'm a Google user through and through...taking this approach it probably going to see Microsoft lose the only play they had to make me consider switching my digital habits towards their services and products.

They're still playing catch up in many areas and this kind of practise is going to harm the overall Microsoft ecosystem in the long term.

[peterb]

Looks as if they have priced it at a similar level to iCloud, I pay 79p/ month for 50Gb.

Google drive gives a 15GB free allowance, but the subscription plans are around a similar price. It has the advantage of being more 'universal' than either Apple's or Microsoft's offerings in that it is available to Android devices.

[crossy]

Just been thinking about this - anyone of the opinion that Microsoft's management has seen the bill for all the storage needed and panicked? If folks ARE abusing the system by storing Terabytes then surely the answer is to impose some data caps? I'm no PR expert but I'm pretty sure that this'd be an easier "sell" to the public than what they're stuck with in this announcement.

Actually I quite like OneDrive, although I'd like it even more if it had a Windows7 client that was a bit quicker ... oh and a native Linux client. Of course, I wouldn't be looking at OneDrive if Dropbox wasn't so expensive (and DB, unlike both OneDrive and GoogleDrive, actually DOES have a Linux client!)

Not a big fan of Google's Drive - despite being pretty "in to" the whole Google "experience" I find Drive to be quite sluggish and not as easy to use as the others. Plus there's always the suspicion that your camera roll is going to end up being exposed to public gaze.

[eviling]

I dont use cloud storage, so this all doesnt really affect me.

I do hope that this will lead to big companies using marketing promises that they can actually fulfill. "unlimited" is a bad promise, no matter how big you are.

Also its interesting to see that Microsoft knows so much about what people are storing in their cloud, makes you wonder how much of their privacy statements are just pure BS :/

[LSG501]

Can't say I use onedrive although I was considering it for backing up my music but I currently have a 'legacy' free account with 15GB, plus 10GB due to being long time user and then the camera roll plus some other offers totalling iirc constant 40GB + 200GB which runs out.

It seems like they're upset that some people actually took unlimited to mean unlimited... yeah I know it's a strange world where we have to guess what unlimited actually means when it comes to tech companies.... unlike if you read a dictionary definition.

Their 'new strategy' is actually one of the worst value cloud storage services out there as well... it's almost like they don't want users to use it.

Mind you the biggest issue is the 'trust' they've just gone and lost if they don't uturn. There are people already calling it bait and switch and saying is this the way windows 10 is heading.. bait us in for free/cheap and then charge us a subscription after an automatic update which we can't turn off.... yeah it really doesn't make you want to upgrade does it.

Also lol, I can't actually easily reach their blog now... wonder why, maybe it's the near 100% backlash about how stupid it is.

[nitro912gr]

so from 40GB I have now (15 free user, 10 for loyality, and 15 from camera roll) I will get down to 15GB?
This is stupid... I use it for backup of my personal files like photos and those files are around 25GB. Well done MS, first you give us something and then you take it away, great marketing...

If they want to be fair they should let us keep the storage and not offer it to new users.

And while I was thinking about using it for work and stop using dropbox because of the new file sharing system.

[LSG501]

so from 40GB I have now (15 free user, 10 for loyality, and 15 from camera roll) I will get down to 15GB?

No one seems 100% sure, some are saying it could be down to just 5GB TOTAL, some are saying that we could keep our existing 'add ons' like loyalty and camera roll due to a line in the faq about not losing any bonuses..... I would read the faq if I could get it to load lol. So camera roll etc would just be discontinued for new users rather than us existing users, the blog post is pretty poor in explaining things.

edit: finally got on the faq...this is what it says so it depends on if they class the loyalty and camera roll as an existing promotion or not.

What happens if I have extra storage from a promotion or some other offer?
The storage you have as part of other promotions is not affected by this change.

[crossy]

I do hope that this will lead to big companies using marketing promises that they can actually fulfill. "unlimited" is a bad promise, no matter how big you are.

I'm not sure who's the bigger idiot in this case. Microsoft for offering "unlimited" and then being surprised when folks started to use it like a limitless resource, or us for believing yet another "unlimited" claim and then being surprised when it turned out not to be.

Also its interesting to see that Microsoft knows so much about what people are storing in their cloud, makes you wonder how much of their privacy statements are just pure BS :/

I was speaking to a "Cloud Architect" the other day and his bon mot was "that's why it's called cloud - everyone can see it!"

Actually the T&C's for most of these systems pretty much give carte blanche for Google/Microsoft/Apple to do what they want with your data. So definitely don't store those R rated "Readers Wives" snaps in Drive/OneDrive/iCloud without some encryption!

edit: finally got on the faq...this is what it says so it depends on if they class the loyalty and camera roll as an existing promotion or not.

What happens if I have extra storage from a promotion or some other offer?
The storage you have as part of other promotions is not affected by this change.

Hmm, I'd think that if you were obviously using that camera roll "promotion" then you'd be unaffected. Be interesting to see if they cut folks who are below 5GB at the moment - so not really using their freebie - back to the new limit.

[nitro912gr]

I hope this camera roll is included in the what is not affected because I'm almost 10gb in those photos already...

[cjs150]

This sounds very similar to the outrage a few years back when broadband users complained about "unlimited" downloads being limited to a set amount (due to a small number of users who abused it - sounds very similar to MS statement). Sadly we had the supine OFCOM decision that unlimited does not mean exactly what it says. I guess MS are simply implementing the same principle.

This is why I would never trust cloud services

[Corky34]

I do hope that this will lead to big companies using marketing promises that they can actually fulfill. "unlimited" is a bad promise, no matter how big you are.

The only problem with that is they provided what was promised to people in the contact, people signed a one year contract that said Microsoft would provide unlimited cloud storage, when that year is up they can choose to sign the new revised contact or not.

It's why subscriptions are the holly grail for most companies, it allows them to offer nice things to entice new customers and then change the contact, yes some customers will leave but they hope and calculate the percentages that are going stay.

Also its interesting to see that Microsoft knows so much about what people are storing in their cloud, makes you wonder how much of their privacy statements are just pure BS :/

I wouldn't wipe my behind with it.
Again it can be changed at a moments notice, you either agree to the new terms or stop using the service.

[Brewster0101]

This , plus the fact one drive is broken badly in Windows 10 = back to google

[aniilv]

I hope this camera roll is included in the what is not affected because I'm almost 10gb in those photos already...

Did you also notice that the photos they upload get converted down in quality? 5MB photo file on phone somehow becomes 3.5MB camera upload file in OneDrive and there is no option not to do it (like there is in say google+ photos)