Microsoft’s OneDrive bait-and-switch forces users to Google Drive

Thanks to a “small number of users” taking up more than 75TB each by backing up “numerous PCs” or uploading their “entire movie collections and DVR recordings”, Microsoft has reduced the amount of storage on OneDrive. Storage may be cheap, but it’s not free – and never will be.

Microsoft’s answer to cloud storage rivals such as Dropbox, Google Drive and the Apple-centric iCloud, OneDrive allows users to store files in the cloud to be accessed anywhere.

Subscribers to Microsoft’s Office 365, which offers word processing, spreadsheet and other apps starting at $7 a month, will now be limited to 1 terabyte, or 1,000 GB, of storage.

Titled “Give OneDrive users back their storage options”, the petition now has 2,541 supporters on the way toward a goal of 5,000.

These changes are expected to come into effect in early 2016 and existing users who now exceed existing storage limits will be given a 12-month grace period to reduce their storage consumption. Discontinuing the unlimited storage option on grounds of abuse is fair enough, but why go to the extent of punishing all your customers?

“We hope OneDrive will retain its 100GB plan, 200GB plan, 15GB bonus, and consider a 2 TB limit for its Office subscribers so that Microsoft will continue bringing its great features that competitors lack in the “Mobile first, Cloud first” world”, the final notes in the petition said.

In an effort to pacify irate reactions to the storage cut, Microsoft made a reminder of how much space the determined capacities actually have. However, from early next year, a few customers may find the service to be more basic than what they’re accustomed to. It will charge United States dollars 2 a month for 50 gigabytes of storage, including the free allotment, rather than the 100 gigabytes it now offers at that price.

Microsoft further added that the company wants to remove focus on “extreme backup scenarios” and turn its attention to high-value productivity and collaboration that benefit the majority of their users. Both those changes will also be introduced early next year.

The move has attracted the ire of OneDrive users. That’s a real shame: 15 GB of free space was the only thing keeping OneDrive in competition with Google.

Several other commenters who said they work with videos noted that the new limits would create problems for them.

Microsoft has been forced to stop offering unlimited storage on its OneDrive cloud storage service because people were using up too much space.

She said if other vendors run into the same issues with people using their unlimited storage services as full backups and/or storage for massive media collections, she could easily see these companies doing something similar to what Microsoft is doing.