We’re making changes to OneDrive storage plans for consumers and are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible.
Since we started to roll out unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 consumer subscribers, a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings. In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average. Instead of focusing on extreme backup scenarios, we want to remain focused on delivering high-value productivity and collaboration experiences that benefit the majority of OneDrive users.
Here are the changes:
- We’re no longer planning to offer unlimited storage to Office 365 Home, Personal, or University subscribers. Starting now, those subscriptions will include 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
- 100 GB and 200 GB paid plans are going away as an option for new users and will be replaced with a 50 GB plan for $1.99 per month in early 2016.
- Free OneDrive storage will decrease from 15 GB to 5 GB for all users, current and new. The 15 GB camera roll storage bonus will also be discontinued. These changes will start rolling out in early 2016.
We’re taking the following steps to make this transition as easy as possible for customers:
- If you are an Office 365 consumer subscriber and have stored in excess of 1 TB, you will be notified of this change and will be able to keep your increased storage for at least 12 months.
- If you are an Office 365 consumer subscriber and find that Office 365 no longer meets your needs, a pro-rated refund will be given. To learn more visit the FAQ.
- If you are using more than 5 GB of free storage, you will continue to have access to all files for at least 12 months after these changes go into effect in early 2016. In addition, you can redeem a free one-year Office 365 Personal subscription (credit card required), which includes 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
- Current customers of standalone OneDrive storage plans (such as a 100 or 200 GB plans) are not affected by these changes.
OneDrive has always been designed to be more than basic file storage and backup. These changes are needed to ensure that we can continue to deliver a collaborative, connected, and intelligent service. They will allow us to continue to innovate and make OneDrive the best option for people who want to be productive and do more.
Additional information can be found at the FAQ, and we will continue to update it throughout the transition.
—
The OneDrive Team
Checked the date, its not April. Why punish everyday subscribers for those that are abusing your system with possibly illegal content.
This is a huge back down.
Yes I agree.
AGREED!!!goobye onedrive!!!hello gdrive!!!
Wow, now you make it really easy for me to switch to Google Drive. Thanks
I loved the simplicity of OneDrive, but I feel like this is a breach of trust, so I too am looking into alternatives.
As a long time Windows Phone user I’ve been looking into the 950XL, partly because I like the way it will upload my photos to OneDrive. If there’s no Camera Roll bonus (even for WP users?!!!!) then suddenly the equivalent unlimited Google Photos storage looks tempting. I need to check out the handsets available.
I’d already tentatively cancelled the renewal on my Groove account. I see the extra 100Gb included with this stands, but I still feel this was an overreaction to a situation that could have been easily rectified in other ways, and as such I think I’ll upgrade my home broadband and make more use of my Plex pass. My trust in your service is shaken, even if in practical terms it would make little difference to me.
Well done team, you should be proud. To be this incompetent takes real talent.
I agree 100% with Stuart on everything.
Taking away storage from what was promised after users have already utilized that storage is borderline criminal in my mind. And you can call on the “It’s free storage” defense, but someone compared this to drug dealing in another forum and if you think about it, it actually is like that. MS offers their 30 GB of free cloud storage to the masses (promising the good stuff) and deeply integrates onedrive functionality to all it’s products/services, and gets many users hooked and utilizing their services to the point they’ve got onedrive deeply entrenched in their own processes. Then suddenly they go “alright, no more good stuff unless you pay for it”. Tell me that isn’t, metaphorically speaking, what a drug dealer would do.
That’s what they’re doing, and that’s what is ******* everyone off about it. On top of that, now I have to spend time managing/moving my photos and documents off of onedrive. That time is taken from doing something else I’d much rather be doing (which is just about anything else as storage management is right up there with going to the dentist or having a colonoscopy). By forcing this on us, makes it even more personal, which makes me (and many others from reading the posts) quit using onedrive altogether.
All of this at a time that Microsoft was actually making good moves and improving their public image… I used to be holding the MS banner, saying “just wait and see, once it all comes together you’ll see what Microsoft is doing and it’ll be awesome”. It was just culminating to that point. Now, it feels like they’re stabbing us all in the back. I’m dropping that banner, and leaving it in the muck to be trampled by all the users that will now be abandoning onedrive (and who knows what else we’ll decide not to use from MS after this). I know I’m seriously questioning getting the Lumia 950XL now because of this.
To quote Stuart: “Well done team, you should be proud. To be this incompetent takes real talent.”
+10 for what Bob S and Stuart wrote! As for the comparison to dentist & colonoscopy.. well, imagine my “joy” of having to that all again on some other provider, after I spent 3 months last year moving it all to OneDrive… and now again, I have to go through all the painful uploading, data management, and everything else. This isn’t just killing my mood towards Microsoft and OneDrive, but cloud services in general… Who & what will be next?
First time I saw this my reaction was “Are they serious?”. I have been a long time customer from Microsoft when they released Zune HD, Vista, Windows 8 and Microsoft Band. All products with really great potential but Microsoft just… I don’t know… I will say in a very diplomatic way “stopped caring”. I own a Nokia Lumia 1020 due to the camera and I am currently using around 7.5GB of storage for photos and videos. I saw the feature of been able to sync my phone with OneDrive and getting 15GB more of space as a very nice option. Now I will get all that removed and only be able to use 5GB… Microsoft you are really trying very hard to make me hate you, so instead of that I will do this: I will got to Amazon, buy 2x 2TB drives, put them in a RAID 1 in a NAS and make them available online. That is I how easily I replaced your service and you don’t get any money from me.
Are you happy as I am?
I agree
yeah, we trusted microsoft and it seriously let us down
I completely agree with the comments above. This is a huge breach of trust and penalizes not only paying customers (Office 365 users) but also many of Microsoft’s most loyal fans. I have never been naive enough to believe that Microsoft was perfect, they have clearly made plenty of mistakes over the last few years… But I have always thought that I could see their over-arching vision and the direction they were trying to move and have defended them in both personal and professional capacities. This horrible decision blindsided me. With their recent hardware announcements and releases paired with Windows 10 I was finally feeling like “we” were gaining some positive momentum for this ecosystem. Then they pull this BS move and the wind has been knocked out of us. This feels like a knife in the back and a slap in the face. So bummed right now…
its also good bye windows mobile phone and windows tablet, its that simple, they wana act like this and use a excuse that is so blatently a lie then I want out. Shame on you microsoft, I recommend whoever wrote and changed the onedrive that you sack them cause its not even a proper hiden lie, its a outright were gona screw you all and tell you to your face moment. Shame cause windows 10 and onedrive were looking great. Id now rather pay google or apple 2 or even 3 time what you charge just so I don’t stay with a company that continually LIES AND CHANGES POLICYS ITS PRESENT CUSTOMERS USE. dID YOU KNOW MY APPLE FRIENDS GOT A DOUBLING OF THEIR CLOUD STORAGE WITHOUT A PRICE CHANGE, ITS ALOT BETTER THAN TAKING IT AWAY FOR SURE.
are you seriously blaming people for using a service you advertised as unlimited? **** your the ones that advertised the unlimited service. you should have just apologised for your mintage, added the cap and then compensated the people who the cap would affect buy either financial or by letting them keep the extra storage. you should not be penalising everyone else for what is your , and yes your means microsoft mistake.
As it is you have probably just killed your mobile phone 950 and 950xl chances of good sales, I think your also gona find your tablets and book sales will now lower and the reason for this will be.,…. PEOPLE CANT TRUST YOU ANYMORE. its really that simple and you don’t need a education to see that.
Someone needs sacking. Tell me is there someone in the management team whos in charge not quite with it cause this is to many steps to far removed from reality. Wow. I hope someone buys the rights to a microsoft movie covering the last 5 years, it would be truly amazing, something you could maybe title, one flew over the cookus nest one to many times.
It’s all just a smokescreen to try to hide how greedy they are, and incompetent. They could have done a smarter client apps and server back-end, and do deduplication on both sides, and adding a delta-sync (differential uploads), and they’d have less bandwidth requirements, and less storage needs altogether, without losing users and their trust in Microsoft as a company, actually giving users what they need and making this service better, not worse. So this is just pure greed, asking 2$ per month for 50GB? There are free alternatives like Box where I had 50GB for free for several years now! And there sure are technically better alternatives all around, starting (but not ending) with Dropbox.
Anyway, I also wanted to ask everyone to voice your concerns here s well, on official OneDrive Uservoice forum: https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/10524099-give-us-back-our-storage
And here are few more of my thoughts about this issue, as comment boxes are too small for everything I’ve got to say to Microsoft: http://itflame.blogspot.hr/2015/11/give-us-back-our-storage-onedrive.html
It’s a sad day for OneDrive. One door closes and another opens!
soz but I don’t see a smoke screen, I just see a blatant lie.
come on do you really need more than 1TB of storage. suck for those in the 5-15GB range but the removal of Unlimited to 1TB is not an issues for 99% or users.
If you buy a Ferrari knowing it can do 300kmp/h, but only take it to 100. If someone killed themselves doing 400 going downhill, wind assisted. Would Ferrari go and limit all the other cars to 100. When you are promised something in tech industry and it’s not delivered the public can be so soft. Microsoft made a claim that affected purchasing decisions on hardware and other services and has not lived up to it. Look at VW they didn’t deliver in their claim, they’re paying a price even to the point that they may have to pay out car owners as their resale values have plummeted.
You make decisions on hardware, apps, software based on what a great offering OneDrive was. Its now taken away and frankly I want to offload my 3x surface pros, 6x windows phones, office 365 subscription, groove subscription. If I lived in the us I’d take them to court.
I am glad you don’t then ^^
Valid point!
I feel the same way – moved from Mac to PC last year, largely because OneDrive was such an amazing offering for media pros compared to the low caps of iCloud. Apple seemed to be going after a luxury-focused consumer with the Apple Watch, while Microsoft understood the needs of those of us who are in the visual media world, offering reasonable cloud storage and fixing longtime holes in the operating system (color management). I may well be going back to the Mac, not because I’m any happier with Apple, whom I still don’t trust, but because many software developers are Mac-first, and Microsoft doesn’t seem to be committed to changing that anymore.
Photographer here…and I totally agree. I reworked my entire workflow around OneDrive. I picked up a Surface Pro 3 specifically for this reason and I couldn’t wait to upgrade to either Pro 4 or Book…..but when I saw Win10 handicapping OneDrive….and now this, I realize I made a huge mistake trusting Microsoft with my data and with my work.
For your needs as you describe, I think you should visit this page https://hubic.com/ 50TB 50€/year.
I’ve changed, and I returned to use the Apple office suite.
By!
dumb analogies…
I do video production work, so this is a heavy blow to me. Made it easy to backup my work files without having to worry about a limit to how much space I’m using.
I do video renderings too for work. I take max 3TB online. This is extremely bad for me.
I’m in a similar situation – cloud backup of my own photographs – I’m a landscape photographer and photo teacher – about 4 terabytes on OneDrive, growing at 0.5 terabytes/year – no piracy, and one of the most appealing things about OneDrive was the huge storage for a reasonable price. Don’t back down from a service that is crucial to a bunch of (non-pirate) media professionals!
5.2gb in average, and new policy free storage is 5gb… LOL
10GB is the minimum and the most reasonable space for online storage nowadays. I don’t know if 5GB is enough, especially for backup photos JPEG+DNG & Video from pureview phones.
I am here with 5MP camera, photos backup alone is take 3.5GB plus 2.5GB of video.
Why don´t you turn back to 7 GB, which is the space you gave before the upgrade to 15 GB? Free users now are in worse situation than before.
I thought everyone knew this was the plan all along. Get users to sign up for a “free” service and store a significant amount of content, and then eventually make it so the free plan isn’t big enough for most users. Saw that one coming from a mile away.
1TB limit is a HUGE deal (and even a deal breaker) for photographers. I need my cloud solution to allow for off-site backup, even if I need to pay for that. So my unified cloud solution won’t be OneDrive anymore. Whatever the cost, it doesn’t do the job.
If you are a professional photographer you can easily get a business account for OneDrive and pay for more than 1TB of space. These changes effect Home and University accounts.
Business account is SharePoint based. you can’t have nested folders and the character length limits are brutal.
To the other commentator who said SharePoint doesn’t allowed nested folders. That’s absolutely false, it does. Many people advise against using folder hierarchies in SharePoint, but that’s a business practice, not a technical limitation. As to the character limit, while there is one, it’s not a ridiculous limit (i believe 260 characters) and from what I understand, that limit is due to URL limitations, not strictly SharePoint (not that that makes it better though).
If you are a professional Photographer… You should seriously check out photoshelter.com…
with out a doubt a much better solution to online storage, delivery, archiving, store front… pretty much everything…
I agree with the 1 TB limit, why not make some 5TB – 10 TB – 20TB whatever subscriptions.
What I’m having problems with is that Microsoft doesn’t reward LOYAL hardware / Windows Phone users.
If one uses a Microsoft Handset (Lumia) or a Microsoft Surface, he has the same 5 GB free limit like those who use OneDrive from an iOS or OSX machine??
Seriously????
There are options for greater than 1TB. You can go to OneDrive for business.
No you can’t. OneDrive for Business is limited to 1TB.
Thaks for the information.
The other part of my comment is the more intresting for many here I think…
I’m a Windows and Office user since 1988.
Windows Phone since 2011, Lumia since 2014.
Plan to buy a Surface (as my two daughters already have) next year.
And now, I’m going to loose 10 GB standard space, 15 GB camera roll and 10 GB loyality space, going from 40 to 5 GB. Okay, it was free, and one has to pay for a service.
But what does MS think that I feel seeing that my brother in law and his wife have both iPhone and Macs, and no Windows, and their OneDrive storage will go down to the same 5 GB as I have?
Does Microsoft know what Customer Orientation means? Having a Windows Phone, I do not have really the impression…..
to the individual who says OneDrive for Business is limited to 1TB. This is not true. While it comes with 1TB, you are free to purchase extra storage.
with the 30gig I get free I was just a little short to put my music collection on one drive, I was actually already thinking and talking to friends about getting OneDrive 1t as it is awesome but not only do microsoft use a excuse that is so plainly a lie they are taking storage away from the bottomed end. When you spend the high prises on windows products you should expect a min amount of storage, being a windows user on desktop and having a windows flagship phone means I get 30 gig. they are taking 25gig away and leaving 5, that means I have to use my phone and desktop differently. That is not acceptable from this company or any other company, I wont be investing in windows eco system anymore. Ill keep my desktop just for gaming but itll be the last product I buy from microsoft. My only hope is that google or apple make their platform gaming so we wont as desktop users have to use windows anymore. Enough is enough I cant support this attitude, I really thought sayta would and was changing things fore the better with a more open policy, this just proves microsoft is exactly the same company they were under Ballmer. Same on you all.
If you want me back your gona have to guarantee MORE THAT 30GIG MIN FOR MY LIFETIME. That’s the only way I stay with them cause I cant trust them and having the better product means nothing without trust.
I agree with Tino. Microsoft should at least run a check if you have MS Windows, Office or MS Hardware and offer more free storage (above 5GB) to those users rather than just the same across the board to everyone who doesn’t use MS products. Call it a LOYALTY bonus!
Exactly.
Btw, here in Switzerland, there are Office offers in a “Home Use Program”.
This is NOT Office365. So, screwed again if you bought this instead of 365. It offers as much storage as the neighbour with Linux and Open Office has been offered from MS.
This is grotesque.
I’ve already got a loyalty bonus – Hopefully it won’t disappear along with the rest…
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=9B94C97E5542FACC!902986&authkey=!AN64fa3Ffwq_SCU&v=3&ithint=photo%2cjpg
agree
The problem is you sell something “unlimited” and then find later that they had a hidden limit all along. I have used OneDrive for years first taking advantage of the 25GB cap before the changed it to 7GB and then the camera bonus of 15GB. Now the free is 15GB and I’m losing 10GB of that plus the camera bonus. They left the loyalty bonus, which is actually kind of humorous in light of this change.
Going from 40GB to 15GB is a big hit. I was ready to expand my use of the service and pick up an O365 subscription, but the heck with that. Not after this change. No way.
I use Windows 10 on 3 computers at home. I have 4 iPhones and 4 iPads at home, all using OneDrive, Groove, and Office 365. I subscribe to Office 365 Family. I did so for the very purpose of being able to access ALL of my Documents/Pictures/Music from OneDrive, on ANY DEVICE. I am using more than 1TB now, but NOT 75TB or more. Those people need to be flagged and encouraged to remove content.
This ********* move by Satya and Co, completely undermines the very reason for offering this. They’re punishing everyone because of a few. It’s a Comcast move, if I’ve ever heard of one.
99% of the users don’t swing buy the onedrive blog.
Bill Gates is a swindler….
Bill Gates doesn’t have anything to do with this
do you really believe that lol.
Bill Gates and even Steve Balmer would never have agreed to this idiotic move. This new CEO Satya is not visionary like Bill and showing his bean counter, ruthless self. Penalizing everyone else because of some idiots is not a valid excuse to reduce free to 5GB (almost useless for modern files nowadays that contain a lot of media).
This is done in the gamble that people will pay for Office365 or they can go elsewhere like Dropbox, and arguably better deal with Google Drive. Cost of storage gets cheaper – reducing free from 15GB to 5GB is just greed.
Time will soon tell if Satya Nadella is what John Sculley is to Apple – killing the original founders’ visions in the name of corporation.
Google Drive = 15GB free + 35GB for camera uploads
ANDROID IT IS THEN FOR ME M$
Indeed! This move just makes its competitor more attractive compared to OneDrive. Forgot Office 365, not all users need it but need generous amount of free storage and huge amount of storage for paying power-users.
If somebody abusing the system then only punish those who abuse the system, don’t penalize everybody. This will just bring more hate to the platform. I thought Microsoft is getting better these days?
No one is abusing the system. They marketed unlimited. Turns out they never intended for it to be unlimited. Now they have to back-track and make it seem like it’s a customers fault.
NO ONE ABUSED the system, microsoft offered unlimited and people used it, where is it the peoples fault. Microsoft made a big f up and then had to reneg. The sad fact is most people would have accepted a cap of 1t on the office 3 service but to then attempt to use it as an excuse to penalise everyone else by taking away the decent free storage is just plain wrong. In a couple of years all use people on 30gigs would have payed anyway but not now not with a company being this ******. Microsoft should have admitted their mistake and should have punished themselves by capping he 1t service and then letting the people with more than 1t use their space for free. that’s would be microsoft punishment. But to punish their whole user base for what was microsoft own mistake is a terrible idea.
Indeed! This move just makes its competitor more attractive compared to OneDrive. Forgot Office 365, not all users need it but need generous amount of free storage and huge amount of storage for paying power-users.
If somebody abusing the system then only punish those who abuse the system, don’t penalize everybody. This will just bring more hate to the platform. I thought Microsoft is getting better these days?
Agreed. I’ve used Onedrive since I got a Lumia phone to back-up my camera roll. It has been great and I just checked that I’m using 15GB out of 30GB I’ve. Now this will shrink to 1 GB… No-way I’m taking the Office 365 as I’ve a feeling it is now “forced” on me.
So, bye bye Onedrive.
Ville
Agreed,
How can someone abuse the space of a service that was meant to have unlimited storage for them? Did they perform any sort of hack, cheating or reverse engineering to obtain this additional space?
Also what’s with the collective punishment?! I had like 25GB for free, and now MSFT is punishing people like me because of others?! And again: unless there has been some sort of foul play in obtaining storage space, what this people did hardly constitutes abuse.
When I think that MSFT couldn’t do anything else to damage their relationship with their customer base, they bull this kind of stunt out of their hat. BRAVO, MSFT! Another facepalm moment.
Wow what a disappoint coming from a new window phone user who just moved my 10gb of music to OneDrive from Google.i guess its back to Google and Android for me.
yeh similar situation, ive supported and ejoyed microsoft and microsoft products for 17 years, yesterday after this announcement is the day I start to move away from windows, their promises mean nothing to me anymore and I certainly don’t want my digital files with a company that cant keep their promises or even tell the truth.
One, ***. This came out of nowhere and obviously not from anyone in PR or marketing. Two, I can’t even count how many times the OneDrive clients ate or borked and upload and synchronization across my computers because it would happen so much. Third, I never even saw the prompt or limit for “Unlimited Storage” as an Office 365 subscriber. Fourth, I have no idea what getting rid of the camera roll bonus will do, but I had the photos backing up from my mother’s android phone to OneDrive because of it… I guess she’ll have to be happy with Google photos now.
Totally agree with you. Microsoft/OneDrive team, why punish the rest of us who try to keep within the limits? Why not just notify those guys that they’ve “exceeded” their “unlimited” storage?
That has no sense. First, some winphone mobiles don’t have microSD slots because of Onedrive 15GB with photos and videos uploads, so what’s the solution now Microsoft?? I’m so disappointed…
And OneDrive continues its decline from what was: (in my opinion) the clearly superior cloud storage solution that made Office 365 a no-brainer, to becoming merely Microsoft’s DropBox.
I used to have One Drive that lived in the cloud that I could use for everything across all my devices without worrying about much of anything. Now, I have regular old cloud storage that requires me to manually select what I want to sync, deal with storage limits and conflicts between devices. I miss the old OneDrive…
It’s astounding because Microsoft is definitely not the first to offer unlimited space. Others have tried and have folded because of these exact same reasons. This behavior is inexcusable. There are so many cases out there where this has been an issue and yet Microsoft went ahead with the offering anyways. You can’t just sweep it under the rug.
It’s very sad to know that Microsoft is punishing normal users for other person’s wrong usage. I have a Windows Phone, Windows 10 PC and it is very useful to have 15GB free storage, I always recommended for my friends and family to use OneDrive, now I will have to stop using OneDrive and migrate to DropBox
I wonder when MS decide to block use of more than two apps simultaneously on Windows 10. They advertise it as a free upgrade, just like unlimited space in OneDrive for Office 365 users…
Well, the carrot of 15GB is now gone for iPhone picture backups. Why should I use your service for a measly 5GB when Google, Hive, Box, and ADrive (to name a few) offer more for free?
Apparently I can’t trust Microsoft to have any longevity in a product. Which begs the question, why trust Microsoft in the first place?
Time to move on and dump the Microsoft apps…
It only takes so many bad decisions before I’d rather host my own data than trust a company like Microsoft to handle it.
Hive is gone as of 10/15. A-Drive is no longer offering free accounts as of 2016. Box and Google are still good though.
Thanks for treating me like such a loyal customer Microsoft. I’ve been using this service legitametly for 6 months and backing up my photos. Might cancel my subscription to office 365 and look at other options.
+15
Oops, I mean +5
Agreed, DropBox is looking prettier and prettier now.
Agreed. Why punish everyone because a few users are abusing this benefit? Deal with the abusers…
Totally, Just when I was thinking on droping off my gdrive account, this is a sign I shouldn’t. Greedy Microsoft.
Right when I thought Microsoft was finally getting it, they pull something like this. Unreal, they should be ashamed.
I completely agree. You need to control the abusers of your service. I understand needing to make changes but this is a little drastic for a first stab at making changes.
It is not abuse to go over 75tb when storage is unlimited. There is no 75tb cap it’s unlimited, there is no “abuse” it’s unlimited. That is the whole point of unlimited (The word meaning no limit) is that there is no limit. So your excuse is not valid. 1tb is not enough for me and I’m just a techie and a photography lover, never “abused” the “unlimited” but welcomed the fact that I had room to grow without worry I planned on using One drive for as long as I’m on this earth. If I’m already over that then that leaves me where? I mean isn’t that what you want from customers is long term commitment? We want the same from a company. I no longer trust you and will be going elsewhere. Btw I have almost 2tb filled on my xbox one and you guys thought 500gb was enough and you are misjudged your consumer needs for storage also.
I totally agree it wasn’t wrong for people to leave 75 t on a unlimited service. But microsoft realised they made a mistake in offering it as unlimited. Unfortunately they want to penalise everyone and not just change the single 1 unlimited service by capping it(which id be understandable and sympathetic to microsoft) But then to reach out to everyone including the people not involved with this service and screw them over too is unacceptable.
plseplse plse spomeone make a new desktop os where I can simply install a game a nd play it. And no lynux and whine is far from acceptable.
950+ comments about this change and not a single one praising MSFT for this sudden reversal in one of the dealbreakwers for a vast majority including Windows Phones (even new phones have limited internal storage), Surface Pro (32 – 64 – 128 flavors) or even Windows 8 and 10 users. The marginal loss in revenue for this offering in OneDrive / Skydrive vastly offsets what the marketing wizards for Cloud will be offering… Bad news for us WP lovers and Good news for Android / Google. Marketing at MSFT sometimes bafles me.
yeh they basicly just killed their 950 and 950xl. sounds small but its gona be a lot biger a issue than just a handful of missing gigs gone, its gona amount to a high financial cost . the small things do count. To be fair if they survive this after the next year or 2 ill be shocked from a consumer point of view.
its not about limiting the unlimited storage that I get and agree, but you should limit the office 1tb package only and leave your 15gig free alone.
I find it a outrage and disgusting that microsoft is going to penalise people on the low end. I was about 2-3 weeks away from getting the 5.99 version 1t storage buit not any more. I have 30gig overall of fre storage and while I’m happy with 30 gig , It doesn’t quite meet my needs. I need at least 50gig a moth and was about to pay for it. But when you take away 15 gig it means I can no longer stre my 15 gig music collection. Itr means if I go away I cant put on a few movies or even after another year I wont even have photograph room, its a huge mistake one that has stopped me buying into microsoft eco system. I’m very disappointed and feel let down but microsoft who I have continuously supported and fought in their corner over the years. I can no long do that cause this is just plainly wrong.
Microsoft is not a company I trust and it isn’t one you should either after this move.
They gave a temporary 10tb to many while unlimited was bring rolled out… they could of at least let us keep that! Google drive time!
I couldn’t agree more, John.
This plan is idiotic. If the Terms of Service give you the right to change the contract you had with almost all of your customers, it gives you the right to do that for those who are “abusing” the service. Why would you even consider angering 99% of your customers rather than the 1% who are causing a problem?
Why would you want to give up your major (only?) competitive advantage over similar businesses by solving your “problem” in this way, instead of in another obvious way that is available, and would have no appreciable negative business or public relations consequences?
What are you thinking, Team?
Please take this opportunity to show that you “listen to your customers,” and abandon this plan.
MS has gone crazzzzzy, either be like Google and give fixed limits, or give unlimited and have rate limiting in place like flickr,
@Product managers of Microsoft, isnt rate limiting a better option than just axing everything
I don’t think I’ve seen such a badly communicated corporate message like this before.
The whole thing stinks. If you want to begin charging for storage, then say it as such.
Don’t wrap it in layers of frankly ******* excuses like ‘a few users abused the service’, and the words ‘productivity and collaboration’.
And then, the frankly CYNICAL decision to lower it to specifically 5GB. When the average user uses just over 5GB.
Then, to top it off – you insult us by saying we get O365 free for a year, (which then, we’ll have to pay for to retain, when all we want is hassle free storage for things like photos).
It’s so transparent, it’s insulting.
And, there’s so many better ways this could have been done.
Charge ‘new’ users instead. Let existing users, who’ve supported this frankly shaky system, retain some benefits.
I have 8GB of photos. I won’t be paying, so I’m off to find some other service.
Seriously, screw you, whoever made this ridiculous decision.
And well done for TOTALLY undermining the work and trust that the rest of MS seemed to have been building.
Completely agree
I undertook to use Onedrive in good faith and stuck by my agreement with Microsoft and their offers
15 free and 15 from Camera Roll
Now I am stuck – I will never trust Microsoft Again
If you say unlimited then it’s unlimited
An organisation of this size must have at least one lawyer of worth that might have reviewed the agreement?
Why am I being penalised for Microsofts lack of business acumen?
100% agreed
MS please stop punishing your loyal customers for a few bad eggs and through that shooting yourself in the foot.
Removing photo sync bonus? Seriously? 5GB free storage for windows phone users, when google gives us unlimited photo storage?
You do realize that windows phone right now is the definition of insignificance in the mobile market … cutting donw cloud storage is not going to do anything for you there.
What are the guys in your marketing/product department smoking?
“unlimited cloud storage” has to be under a specific limit that you neglected to tell anyone about? Uploading 75TB is NOT that persons fault when you literally told them that it was unlimited. Stop lying to people and maybe you wouldn’t have this problem in the first place. Why should we ever trust anything you offer in the future? The answer is simple, we shouldn’t.
I absolutely agree
Wow……guess I won’t be buying a new ‘Lumia 950 phone. I was expecting to be able to use onedrive on it for everything…..like they advertised! What a huge letdown. Idiots.
I would have scaled back the unlimited plans, not reduced the phone backup storage feature?!?!? Why?!?!? This is gonna hurt their sales of their phones big time!
Very disappointed with the reduction from 30gb to 5gb, will be going elsewhere for sure, definitely not buying a windows phone now.
Hopefully MS sees the error in this, as it’s hard to be mobile first, cloud first with a non competitive cloud platform. I’d be ok with “our bad guys, we’re just going to cap unlimited at 5TB and leave alone the free stuff and other plans.”
Sorry, but I call ********. I understand that Microsoft may not have the storage to support a bunch of users uploading massive amounts of data from numerous PCs, but surely one of the bean counters in Redmond told the suits in charge that some users were likely to upload significantly more data than the average person. It feels like Microsoft is feigning surprise.
I’m also confused by Microsoft’s decision to slash its other offerings, the ones with pre-determined caps that are impossible to abuse (if you’re offering 15GB, then it’s not an abuse to use the full 15GB).
This isn’t the end of the world, but at the very least, the timing sucks. OneDrive is one of the key services Microsoft is trying to tie in with Windows 10, so why make it less attractive right as Windows 10 gains some traction?
Yup, count me in as another disappointed customer. I fully appreciate Microsoft’s issue with those abusing the system, but I think that it could have been handled differently for the abusers while allowing those in the 1TB to 5TB range with legitimate backups and data that does not include copyrighted material.
Also, I think ******* on the free customers (those that redeemed various bonuses along the way to go from 5GB to 15GB) is completely unnecessary to battle the stated problems.
With many improvements in OneDrive lately, I finally decided to move from Google Drive (for photos and music mainly) and Dropbox to OneDrive just in this summer!
Now with this move, I just want to say you cannot ever beat Google ! You tried to lure new users from other services and then cut your features, are you testing to see if OneDrive is strong enough to keep users in this kind of move?
Your excuse is inadmissble !!! To avoid extreme cases, you removed unlimited stockage, it’s OK, understandable! But to shrink 30GB to 5GB in order to avoid extreme cases, is it just a joke from Microsoft?
You gained back my trust this year of 2015, not it was just short-lived.
To move your files to other services, use http://mover.io
Having been a user of Onedrive since the mesh days, I must say I’m highly disappointed with these decisions. I’ll more than likely cancel my subscription and move to Dropbox as my primary cloud storage provider. You’re trying to say it was a small minority that messed this up for everyone, but the truth is you offered too much free storage to the average user and we’re not making enough of a profit. Now everyone that has exceeded their limit will either pay for an upgraded storage tier or transition to a different provider.
This flip-flop-strategy will cost you indeed a lot of customers. You’re simply not reliable anymore and lose your credibility.
I was an early adopter since the mesh days as well and experienced so many cuts and steps back in this and other Microsoft services. Customers will fear, that suddenly every free service will cost something in the future. Infinite updates for Windows 10? Maybe forcing us to subscription plans will be the next step.
The effect of this will be disastrous – just expect horrible media echo.
Best thing happening for dropbox.
I totally agree with you guys…i’ve been using onedrive since the first days and i feel betrayed.
I suscribed to office 365 to get unlimited storage and now? Im using more than 1 tb…
And what about all my family i convinced to move from dropbox to the free versione of onedrive because they could use 30 Gb free (15 free + 15 camera roll)? They all use more or less just 18-20gb and they should stop using onedrive or pay for it just cause to some guys who used 75+ tb?
We are using every Microsoft product, invluded Windows phonea so onedrive was the way to go, expecially fornohoto uploads…but now Microsoft is failing.
I hope u can change your mind in this idea Microsoft and avoid to disappoint all of your loyal customer. Just punish who abused the service, not everyone else who believed u and your Services.
I can set you up with a google drive under my business account for the current unlimted rate (£6.60 or $10).
You can get in touch via andparsons@live.co.uk if you’re interested.
I think I’m gona try drop box too because of this bs but do you know I=f I can link it to my windows phone so groove will work seamlessly with it. If not then I might have to switch to android because I’m sure they’ll have a app and a media player to do that.
That’s the issue there, most people will move on now.
Wow, gutting the free storage and killing the photo backup bonus. Bad move. One of the big plusses of OneDrive was not having to micromanage storage space.
I already have a Dropbox account. Not sure why I need to keep OneDrive around any more especially since sync is so slow.
exactly !
Dear Microsoft, what have you done with this announcement? I was your loyal customer, but now I am not anymore.
If anyone wish to migrate to Dropbox, please use this link to register at Dropbox and both of us will win an extra 500MB: https://db.tt/ifBIrUOK
Thank you and God bless you!
Seriously???
The Free OneDrive storage (15 GB) and the 15 GB camera roll storage bonus was the big differentiator between dropbox, google drive and the rest of the competition. It was how I was able to convince my friends to try and use the service.
This is a really bad idea… You’re going to lose a lot of potential clients.
And a lot of existing ones.
Yeah! Now even Google Drive offers 15GB of free storage because of OneDrive now Microsoft is downgrading it to just useless 5GB free storage? Seriously, this must be a bad joke.
OneDrive is marketed as a one storage for everything and synced between devices, with new 5GB free storage that’s just limiting for today’s need especially flagships that have at least 13MP of resolution while others even have 4K video recording as a default.
Remember, OneDrive isn’t a household name for cloud storage nor that popular. The most popular are Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud. Google Drive is preinstalled on most android devices which is the majority of smartphones while iCloud is tightly integrated to iOS devices and Mac and also well marketed. Dropbox for a long time has been a household name for cloud storage and very popular regardless of the platform. OneDrive? That’s only popular for handful of Windows users and Office 365 subscribers. Now OneDrive offers same or less storage than competitors for free? No Placeholders? Now why people choose OneDrive again?
Yeah, “mobile first, cloud first” strategy? They can better use “mobile we don’t care, you better use someone else cloud” strategy.
Yes, I feel stupid too for recommending this service against much faster and reliable Dropbox.
I agree, used the free, reasonable OneDrive to sell friends into MS services. This does appear to be greed, definitely not a benefit to loyal customers. Don’t really care about the unlimited, but the overly limiting 5GB is ridiculous
What a let down.
What kills it is the 15GB downgrade to 5GB for new users and no more bonus for using it for photo backup.
Indeed. I just switched from Google Drive to OneDrive a few days ago, and having 11GB Photos/Music, so 15GB (actually 30 with the bonus) was great for me, as I prefered the way onedrive handles music integration into groove. But now thinking of going back to google drive.
Not aa bad idea as they offer unlimited photo and video uploads at a reasonable resolution/megapixel.
Really disappointed about the big backflip and d@#k move on reducing the 15GB to 5GB
Guess I’ll be moving all my storage to Google and will no longer be buying Surface Pro in the future having bought 2. Maybe buying a MAC will treat me better
Totally agree. 15 GB Camera Roll storage is a big incentive for Windows Phone users. 15 GB sign up bonus was great for home users. I have a Windows Phone, Laptop, and Desktop, all syncing via OneDrive and using 28 GB.
MS has practically forced us to use OneDrive with the Win 10 update.
Is this just a Blog Post or an official service change from MS?
What a dishonest statement.
So, you’re punishing EVERYONE because some people abused the system? Yeah, that sounds fair. Another Microsoft service taking several steps back instead of forward.
Even iCloud now is more cheap. This must be a joke, right?
Is Steve ballmer back?
Seems like his logic
Passing the blame onto the users…
You offered unlimited storage..what else did you expect.
Capping it at 1TB for all users is a good idea if this problem was highly impacting but why are free users being impacted and cut…OneDrive literally has 0 advantages against Dropbox/Google drive now…
Honestly Microsoft knew they wanted to make unpopular, user impacting OneDrive changes and have passed the blame onto the customer, well done…..
I used to recommend OneDrive and laughed at the 5GB of which iCloud provides their users….back to the old Microsoft I guess…
No advantages at all. Especially after they removed smartfiles.
Just when MS good will was going up and they pull this too. This is ridiculous.
Awful. Awful.
an extreme cut to storage? way to alienate both new and existing users. Now probably Google Drive is the way to go.
Why not just put in a top end limit – your examples of users actually using your ‘unlimited’ service, then blaming them for having to make changes to everyone is nonsensical. It’s a great way to get rid of existing users, and push them towards other solutions – especially when people lose their automatically sync’d photos with the OneDrive app on their phone, in 12 months time.
Note – I’m not a free customer, I have both personal and work subscriptions.
As an early adopter of OneDrive, this news is not only disappointing…. it is impossible to rationalize. 50 GB of iCloud storage is know cheaper than 50 Gb of OneDrive and for a Mac user (like me) there is no point in paying double for the same amount of storage.
Great job in alienating OneDrive loyalists. I’ve purchased my 50Gb of iCloud storage and have already begun transferring files. You just lost a customer (and I am sure many more)
Here’s an idea, Office 365 should come with its own backup service.
Oh and this is a ridiculous change, why clamp down this hard? Documents of today are larger and larger. Sharing pictures with family can be a huge event. Consumer cameras can be a modest 36MP, those digital negatives can eat storage fast.
Google Drive and Dropbox still offer unlimited tiers, even if it is for ‘business’ for a modest fee a month.
***********! Pretty much sums it up
Sempre utilizei da plataforma da microsoft, influenciando inclusive minha rede de contatos a utilizar o serviço em vez de outros como dropbox por exemplo, estas decisões me surpreenderam por parte da companhia e me deixam apreensivo quanto aos arquivos que tenho de backup (alguns com certa de 5 anos ou mais), gostaria realmente que a companhia voltasse atrás para não perder público como ocorreu com algumas decisões do xbox one por exemplo.
*********** ! was the word that got blanked out…
***********.. was the word they blanked out…
Rooster Suckers
changing the free storage for current users and getting rid of the unlimited storage PEOPLE PAID FOR (yes, you made a statement about unlimited storage)?
I guess you don’t want us to use OneDrive to back up our photos anymore.
You are pushing us away to competing services and once your force users to do that they might abandon you altogether.
To be clear no one abused the system, We were given unlimited storage, and expected MS to keep good on that promise. I am wondering why I should keep paying for that office subscription now. Google still has free office alternative correct.
This is a terrible decision. It would have been much smarter to keep 15 GB free and 2 terrabytes for OneDrive. There are a lot of photographers that will drop MS Office and move to Google docs +drive as their office solution.
Even a smaller company like Mediafire gives 10 GB of free storage in each account. Do they really want us to believe that they cannot afford offering 15 GB for free? Lol
Last night I just explained to 25 people how wonderful it was to have unlimited storage on OneDrive for use in keeping copies of all my pictures, family videos, documents, etc. in an off-site yet online environment and convinced most of those people to become Office 365 subscribers. I described how easy it is to keep my data synchronized. How comforting it is to know my data is secure and welcome in Microsoft’s cloud. Well, thanks to your outright stupidity, I have E-mailed them as of tonight suggesting they hold off and no longer consider purchasing the O365 product for its OneDrive benefits.
This is classic bait-and-switch, plain and simple. Microsoft overpromised and under delivered here, period. There is no other way to slice it. Hiding profit-chasing under the guise of ensuring quality of service due to a small minority abusing the system may convince a 5 year old, but certainly not me.
This decision is absolutely atrocious and leaves Microsoft with precisely ZERO competitive advantage against other cloud storage service providers.
“Mobile first, cloud first”. Right, sure looks like it. Your Azure cloud and the datacenters that power it are supposedly so powerful and so capable that in an era where storage is cheaper than it has EVER been in the history of computing, you’ve decided to restrict anyone and everyone to quantities that in today’s world are nearly *USELESS*.
OneDrive has been routinely billed as *THE* place for the storage of online media for customers. Be it music, video, documents, spreadsheets, etc. You even told us to upload all of our music so we could live stream it to our phones with a special Music folder! Now you’re all of a sudden trying to change your tune by claiming it was only ever intended for “Productivity” (read: small, highly compressible Word documents because we blew our service and revenue model due to improper due-diligence)?
You can consider me a lost Office 365 subscriber, permanently. And I am a devoted Microsoft user who convinced his enterprise to sign a multi-million dollar Premier support contract that also holds an EA with SA on all of our products! You can bet I will ensure news of this bait and switch will spread like wildfire to any and all Microsoft customers I encounter.
Pathetic. This is the “new” Microsoft is it? Very impressive. Off to Dropbox we go.
Wow, this is scary, I guess I’m just going to have to move all of my photos to another service because while all other cloud services are increasing their free storage, Onedrive decides to decrease it. This is a huge step backwards. I was considering paying for extra storage beyond my 30gb free (with camera roll bonus), you can forget that now. This is NOT how you attract new users. Why punish free users because a couple people who pay for office 365 with unlimited storage abused the system?
Bad move.
Bad move. Punishing many people for a few who took advantage of “unlimited” storage. Maybe you shouldn’t have promoted “unlimited” storage.
Back to Google Drive
How do I get a refund on my time and effort to move photos and documents of your service onto a competitors? Where can I send an invoice for my time?
I agree. The real cost here for me is the time and bandwidth it took to upload all my data. $60 a year on Amazon’s cloud for unlimited is looking pretty good now…
How the F*** do you uninstall onedrive?
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Skydrive]
“DisableFileSync”=dword:00000001
“Unlimited”: not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent.
With all due respect, nobody “abused” the system. Regardless of what they stored or how they stored it, assuming the content itself was within the terms of service, it is simply not possible to abuse a resource bound by no limit.
My Office 365 subscription is getting canceled within the next 15 minutes.
This is the Microsoft that Satya Nadella is carefully crafting? Nothing says “Mobile First, Cloud First” like an online cloud storage solution that is *reducing* storage limits. This is 2015 is it not?
Satya wants people to “love” Windows, not tolerate it. Nothing makes me want to love a Microsoft service more than knowing I paid for something that Microsoft is outright refusing to deliver. I have canceled my Office 365 subscription.
WOW because of some people you punish all your loyal users? please ban users who did that! not by decrease your amount of free storage and camera upload!
How unprofessional of MS to use #OneDrive abusers be the excuse for cutting back the service for all. #youredoingitwrong
Either target and limit the abusers – or own up and be transparent about the real reason (presumably $$$) that EVERYONE’s service has been cut back. Mind you, a service MS have promoted and positioned based on the earlier value proposition to customers.
Subscribe to Office 365 = extra value, WP Camera Roll backups – extra value, Other Bonuses – Bonus value….all adding people’s OneDrive storage available….until today.
Such a bad move. It doesn’t make sense to reduce the free storage from 15GB to 5GB. I’ve been using onedrive from the earliest Mesh date and convince many of my friends to use it. Now it’s useless compare to other service. I’m moving to Dropbox. Go to the ****, Onedrive. You are killing yourself
I had to read this post several times to make sure I was understanding it right, specifically this part:
“Free OneDrive storage will decrease from 15 GB to 5 GB for all users, current and new. The 15 GB camera roll storage bonus will also be discontinued. These changes will start rolling out in early 2016.”
So as a current user, I have 30gb of storage today. Under the new changes in early 2016 (assuming February), I will lose 25gb of that 30gb. But to be nice, you will give me a 12 month grace period in order to move my files to another cloud storage service. Because, I have done nothing wrong nor did anything to abuse the system.
But, I get a free one year of Office 365, which gives me 1Tb of space, to keep me around for another year.
Which maybe by that time, you will have realized you screwed up and repeal all of the changes you just announced above.
This is the new Microsoft?
Now that is a low blow Microsoft! Because of the malicious acts of a few, you take away all of our earned storage and then make us buy more in smaller increments at a higher price. You are hurting everyone, especially artists, designers, programmers, etc who depend on their cloud storage.
A better solution would be to not take away storage from those who already have it and just change the policy here on out.
I am close to 1tb of used storage and now I won’t have enough space to store my photos and office documents!
I am a legacy user of onedrive(skydrive) and have been an avid supporter since the beginning. I have got my friends and colleagues to switch over from Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. Now I can no longer recommend One Drive to others because now the competitors offer a better deal. (Google Drive gives 15gb of storage and unlimited for photo) (Amazon gives unlimited storage for photos.)
I hope you can rethink a better solution and meet your supporters half way! We realize that you need to make some changes to keep your business model, but there is no need to throw us under the bus and take everything away from us!
Lesson to learn, don’t promise what you can’t support! You offered unlimited storage.
By the way, camera upload was one of the most useful features. First you get rid of smart place holder files, and now camera upload.
Please reconsider!
Wow, that’s a shocking difference and decrease in the offering. As a huge Microsoft fan this has just taken a huge chunk of my faith in this company’s practices. It doesn’t make sense to offer 10 TB of data for EVERYONE and then take it away because few people started using 75TB of data –> only about 8 times of a normal user that YOU offered to honor (well, actually unlimited, but mine had been saying 10TB for a long time now.) If you are going to make a promise for certain capacity, then make sure you CAN handle that load! Clearly, you weren’t capable enough to offer everyone the amount of data you promised, and now you’re backing down with some LAME excuse. This is a huge HUGE disappointment. I don’t usually speak out for stuff like this, but this has me raged. Granted, I don’t have more than 100GB of data and it probably will not affect me with my Office subscription, but this is huge setback for you, Microsoft, with the slowly improving reputation of your company. Just watch, everyone will be talking about this starting tomorrow, and your image will be destroyed by this retraction of a promise you made to tons of users. More of your future practices like this, I will be more than happy to take my business elsewhere.
Bad business. Will immediately discourage all of my coworkers. Competitors have the edge will gladly pay them for better services options. Now that money grab is out I will find best competitive option. Thanks for finally showing Microsoft’s true colors. It’s been hiding all along.
I guess the horse was put before the carriage and the horse caught up. But now instead of stopping the one carriage you’re blocking an entire thoroughfare…
I’m not sure how to take this as I’ve been trying to support MS rationally for a while, but this is as they say, “*** backwards”. Definitely jumping ship on my cloud storage I stayed with the slower transfer rates for long enough.
Most of this is as a disgruntled end user, but it’s no less true. Hopefully those that you drive away free up enough of the system for your team.
“Carriage before the horse…” **** 😛
Just when OneDrive was heading in the right direction. Thought I was reading an April fools joke.
We need multi terabyte plans so we can completely move to the cloud.
The unlimited plan was a marketing trick gone bad. Now you have more bad press than you bargained for.
Come out with realistic pricing plans and stick to them.
Are you try to kill yourself?
Decreasing free storage from 15GB to 5GB is a MAJOR DRAWBACK!
And discontinuing Camera Roll bonus is a DEAL BREAKER!
Why do you suggest every Windows Phone user to backup photos on your service but you don’t give them space they needed?
OneDrive will be another Microsoft’s junk.
I’m confused. Just what did you think was the definition of “unlimited”?
If you have a problem at people using 75 TB, then why did you announced unlimited storage? Why are you now changing it to 1TB? Why not something reasonable like 10TB?
Will Microsoft be making a way to transfer data directly to an alternative service, or will they be paying for the bandwidth overage fees my ISP will charge me when I download all my OneDrive data and upload it somewhere else? This could cost me $250!
Despite all the complaints here, one has to say that $1.99 / month to store 100GB photos/data securely in the cloud is still a great deal!
I think the Office 365 Home deal is the best deal. Yes, sometimes you have to pay for something, but we’re talking coffee level money here.
Yeah, it is a good deal, only that isn’t what they’re offering. They’re killing the 100GB and 200GB plans and offering 50GB for $1.99:
“100 GB and 200 GB paid plans are going away as an option for new users and will be replaced with a 50 GB plan for $1.99 per month in early 2016.”
^^ saved me the effort thanks
Onedrive is a service that is getting worse and not better. I have enough storage for my use, but I use the service less and less, because of constant annoying sync issues with my office files.
Microsoft is doing with OneDrive as they did with Windows Phone, remove function after function that made Windows Phone cool and different from iOS and Android.
I used to own a Lumia 920, I use iPhone and iPad today…
So are you telling me that I have 30gb that I win with referral and you’re going to down my gb to 5gb? Let me tell you that you suck I was a happy user of One Drive until today and now I’m not using anymore you’re cloud.
It’s pretty disappointing as it feels a little bit like a bait and switch.
While I’m trying to keep myself from making a knee jerk decision, I’ve been lamenting OneDrive lately for it’s lack of features, speed, and the way it bogs down my computer but the service plans have been keeping me around.
Dropbox is sounding like a nice alternative now due to its buttery smoothness and speed.
This is really shortsighted of Microsoft. I have to believe the vast majority of users don’t use a whole lot of data, or even come close to what their max is.
It’s important to be able to offer 15GB free, which puts Microsoft on par with competitors such as Google Drive. It’s also good marketing to have things like the loyalty bonus and the camera roll bonus. It gets people to start using the service and who cares about 30GB? That’s nothing for Microsoft.
I completely agree with capping the accounts at 1TB though. OneDrive isn’t meant to back up full images of multiple PCs or 75TB of DVR recordings. 1TB should be more than enough for people’s documents, pictures, & music.
To continue my comments, since it got cut off:
I don’t get why you don’t just contact people with more than their 1TB, tell them they have 3 months to get it below 1TB, and leave all the accounts that have 15-30GB for free alone. I just feel that this is going to **** off the majority of users who use the service in good faith to stop the small minority who take advantage.
I cannot believe this is happening right after they rolled out a new OS that has deep integration to this service and a new phone OS which will rely heavily on this service. I could engaging dropping the 15gb picture sync bonus but to go from 30gb free to 5 gb is JARING even for someone who isn’t paying for the service.
I can’t believe Im being punished for the actions of others. Why not drop the storage for those who are abusing the service ? This is not good. As a faithful WP and One Drive user this is disheartening to know you would do this. I’ll take my services elsewhere if this is not revoked immediately!!!
What you’re doing is destroying OneDrive, and making it a far less viable option than you competitors. What are you people thinking? Your competitors offer multiple paid storage options, and you’re only going to offer one 50GB option?
Goodbye and good riddance. I was thinking of paying for extra storage but now I’ll take my business to Dropbox.
Hi,
As a loyal users of OneDrive since the first day. This is a big let down. The current onedrive is not perfect. In fact until today I have still have problems with files not syncing or refuse to sync once in a while. But still, I stick with Onedrive.
Microsoft should not penalize the normal user and long time user who do not abuse the system. For those who do abuse, please do take action but please do not have policy in one stroke whack everyone.
Ok this is very simple, Microsoft. You have two options:
1 – You keep these plans, specially the cutting of 15GB to 5GB of free storage, and I’M OUT and moving all my stuff to Google Drive; or
2 – You rethink this really really really stupid decision of punishing everyone because a few were idiots, and I’ll keep using your services.
This is a “battle” that you can’t really hope to win. If you go ahead with this, I will simply abandon your services. And I’ll incentive and take along with me as many people as I can (starting with my entire family).
You’re not granting me the “privilege” of using your services. *I* am the one granting you the privilege of having my patronage. It’s users that keep your business alive, not the other way around.
So think well about this. Without users, you might as well kiss your cloud services goodbye. Because what isn’t lacking out there is offer. From Google to Dropbox, to Mega to a ton of other cloud services. You are NOT special, Microsoft. OneDrive is NOT special.
You would do well to remember that.
It was just 12 hours ago that I was explaining to my colleagues how OneDrive provided a superior experience when compared to Google Drive and Dropbox. I am using the free usage right now and I was just about making my mind to get the Office 365 for lifetime and share it with my family for its unlimited storage capabilities. I never intended to abuse it by storing terabytes of data but just considered it to become a safe haven for all my RAW photographs are other important files.
Now you screw your loyal users by taking away 10gb of free capacity and other goodies and capping the Office 365 limit to 1TB, I simply don’t trust your team enough to believe that you are going to honor that as well, though that may have been sufficient for my use cases.
Everyone who was reading this blog post, this is a reminder that Microsoft was able to determine that these users who abuse the service were weeded out as OneDrive store your precious data UNENCRYPTED and they have the right to access the data without your consent (read their data policy), so I suggest we look for alternatives to this non sense.
I am not so sure if I want to get that Yoga 900 or the Lumia 950 XL anymore. Microsoft CANNOT be TRUSTED. Yet again!
I agree, Chaitanya. Trust is the real issue. If they’re going to make a blanket change like this, with no consideration of the average user, what’s next?
It was just 12 hours ago that I was explaining to my colleagues how OneDrive provided a superior experience when compared to Google Drive and Dropbox. I am using the free usage right now and I was just about making my mind to get the Office 365 for lifetime and share it with my family for its unlimited storage capabilities. I never intended to abuse it by storing terabytes of data but just considered it to become a safe haven for all my RAW photographs are other important files.
Now you screw your loyal users by taking away 10gb of free capacity and other goodies and capping the Office 365 limit to 1TB, I simply don’t trust your team enough to believe that you are going to honor that as well, though that may have been sufficient for my use cases.
Everyone who was reading this blog post, this is a reminder that Microsoft was able to determine that these users who abuse the service were weeded out as OneDrive store your precious data UNENCRYPTED and they have the right to access the data without your consent (read their data policy), so I suggest we look for alternatives to this non sense.
I am not so sure if I want to get that Yoga 900 or the Lumia 950 XL anymore. Microsoft CANNOT be TRUSTED. Yet again!
It’s ’cause of overselling. You just cant offer “unlimited” to all your paid users. Even for “small number” of them, who use those “unlimited” storage. Don’t blame them, blame yourself. But that’s OK capping upper limits to 1TB. I don’t understand why you capping 30-50GB to 5GB. You can’t afford it either, aren’t you?
People just will move to other services, and left only DOCX and XLSX files with you. For some time.
There are two questions:
1) will loyalty bonus remain? There are now words about this bonus there or in OneDrive Changes FAQ.
2) will referal bonus remain? As well there are no words about this bonus.
No one abused the service they used what was offered, it’s MS abusing everyone that wanted to use onedrive.
Wow! I’m done! Bye.
Alright Onedrive, I am going over to Google Drive. I have been here since beta and been using Onedrive has been my primary storage with all my school content. Now I have a sour taste in my mouth. Will avoid future offers because I will probably get screwed again!
I cannot believe this. Hear the users and roll back for your own sake.
Very disappointing news from Microsoft/OneDrive that you are not only removing the unlimited, though I can certainly understand the reasoning behind that and think it fair. But reducing the free stuff from 30GB to 5GB.. TERRIBLE. Are you going to remove the old “Loyalty” bonuses as well?
Maybe now Google will write a windows all for Google Drive backup and get more customers from Microsoft Services?
What’s the likes of a Dedicated Windows and Windows Phone user meant to do for Photo Storage..
Oh I know.. Pay for Office 365 (something I never use at home) to get 1TB of storage online from Microsoft.
I’m practically in disbelief – I thought the idea was to bring customers into the Microsoft ecosystem? I have a Windows phone, tablet, and desktop. Syncing files between the three is impractical without the cloud, and I definitely have more than 5 GB of content. 5 GB? Correct me if I’m wrong, but looks like we are heading back to 2008. I am not going to pay $24/year to keep the same service when it is available free somewhere else. I guess I’m going back to Google
Well, so much for that…. after racking up loyalty bonuses, enthusiast bonus, Groove Music Bonus and now you want to take it all away. Not enough room for photos, not enough room for music, let alone both..
Why would I stay, why would I sign up at all? For a service that touts Cloud first, you will now have the worst cloud storage offering and we be completely incapable of providing the service you were implemented to do. Worse still, you have lost the trust of a loyal band of followers…
Only the free, camera roll and O365 allotments are affected. Other bonus allotments are not being toughed. See the FAQ. Last question specifically.
https://blog.onedrive.com/onedrive_changes_FAQ/
Ps. I think changing the free and camera roll allotments is a mistake.
Ouch. I’m a MS fanboy through and through, but this is one of the worst marketing blunders in recent memory. It’s one thing to realize that your offer of unlimited space might be too generous. It’s another to kill it (along with other popular options), hamstring what’s left, and top it all off by referring to the moves as a “pursuit of productivity and collaboration”. Because nothing says “productivity booster” like a feature-gutting announcement made at 9PM on a Monday night in November.
Paul Thurrott already told everyone to jump ship for dropox. First it goes from great to just ok, and then they betray customers. Nice move guys. Makes sense, WP is dead so they don’t need to offer back up anymore as an advantage and they would rather use servers for online document collaboration. This is just them getting out of the business.
Get ready to lose lots of customers. You guys messed up bad and you deserve what will happen.
Microsoft, do better next time. We thought you had changed.
You have lost my loyalty with this announcement. Microsoft is clearly forgetting that they have many competitors in cloud storage field in addition to losing loyalty and trust of existing consumers. If Office 365 users are abusing the system, punish them! Why punish us who are using less than 50GB of data
Ok, I see.
* Breaking not-yet-fulfilled promise of unlimited paid plan.
* Using non-relevant dummy reasons (75TB argument is not relevant for 30 -> 5GB decrease).
* Drastically lowering free plan.
* Breaking promise from windows devices’ marketing materials.
* Price increase for standalone paid plans (for the same $1.99 amount giving just half of the paid space (50 GB instead of 100 GB, so for 100 GB it will cost 500%, for 200 GB it will cost 250% of the original price as the user is required to buy Office 365 plan).
And the Business/Enterprise promise of unlimited storage is still not even started rolling out yet even it is basically a year after being promised and announced with big halo. This halo is linked with bogus reasoning as well (need to announce at least 12 month in advance, this is not relevant as it is not a breaking change).
This announcement and the recent announcement of deeper integration of Dropbox in Office does not smell to be independent.
You know what? If you guys are actually going with this, I am going to pay $1.99/mo to Google for their 100GB storage.
This is horrible news.
Force everyone not running Windows 8.1 to use OneDrive in the least convenient way by removing placeholders, then do away with one of the greatest reasons to have an Office 365 account?
I am not only a podcaster, but I do some video and photography work for clients from time to time and have only accumulated 1.5TB including my own personal files that I have uploaded off of my machines.
I can understand clamping down on those who are abusing the system much in the way that people using their mobile data plans for dozens of GB of mobile data, but to drop everyone down to 1TB instead of the 10TB tier users see before they go over? That is just ridiculous.
I wonder which service will read this and offer to get this bad taste out of customers mouths you have placed here this evening.
Change back to 1tb from unlimited is understandable. Changes to the free allotment is ridiculous.
but why
Why aren’t you just putting a cap on storage space at 2TB or so? Why are you punishing every OneDrive user, including the free ones, for the actions of just a handful of people that abused the system?
And why are you getting rid of the Camera Roll bonus? It’s almost as if you WANT everyone to head to rival services en masse!
Quit punishing everyone for something that only a few people did!
OneDrive client already took a step back when we went to Windows 10 …. now the entire service is being rolled back.
Someone in MS needs to be fired. For all the good things MS has done to turn the image around, OneDrive has been one continuous disappointment. It’s the friggen backbone of Office 2016 collaberation and it’s been systematically downgraded _twice_ this year.
Major overhaul is needed guys. MAJOR overhaul. THAT has to start from within.
What is this ? i have 30 GB some how and i have a Lumia and my auto back up already hit 6gb so i need to delete everything ? Huge backdown MS a big one
Better say, “We will no longer provide OneDrive service” and offer a nice migration with step by step instructions for current users to jump ship to Dropbox or Google Drive. Wors’t decision ever in the lead of Satya Nadella.
Whose bright idea was this? Just a few weeks ago, Panos Panay was showcasing the Lumia 950’s 4k video upload to OneDrive, how do your scenarios work? You asked us to trust you with our digital lives, gave us a great home for files, images and video. The demands for cloud storage increase with every next generation of devices, your own offerings demand a lot of storage. And now, out of nowhere you cripple your service yet again, first was getting rid of placeholders on windows 10. What did you think was going to happen when you offered unlimited storage? What did you think was going to happen when you forced OneDrive onto every user of Windows 10, and set your goal for a billion devices running it? Was no one doing the math? This is your fault for your shortsightedness. Don’t blame the users. When you gave unlimited storage and people used your service to upload hundreds of terabytes, it’s not abuse, it’s just using the product as advertised
So what’s next? You’ll tell me that I can’t install Office 365 on 5 computers, only 3? Then only 1? All in the same term of service? Because you’ve decided the revenue model isn’t working out?
Your trust is now blown and I live and breathe Microsoft day in and day out for a career and because I believed in the company and its vision. No more. This is the biggest blunder of PR and Customer Service I’ve seen since… oh wait, it wasn’t that long ago: You just did the same thing to customers with the Xbox One launch.
When will you learn that customers are your bread and butter and that we choose you, not the other way around? Consider me another departed.
OneDrive:
– no collaboration support
– limited file supports compared to Dropbox and Google Drive
– slow syncing speed compared to Dropbox and Google Drive
– so many bugs with their syncing mechanisms.
– not versatile to use other onedrive accounts on the same PC
The only reasons I bought 2 years worth of Office 365 was just because of their cheap storage, nothing else. I am saying bye to onedrive soon. Hope Google Fiber is coming to my city soon with their free 1TB of storage.
This is not something Microsoft can do when their Windows Phone customer base is so small.
The camera roll 15GB was a great way to back up my photos and helped to differentiate OneDrive.
Poor choice Microsoft…
Honestly, how dare you. After years of having 30gb of space you expect me to be ok with only having 5gb!? What about backing up my photos from my WP!? What about the music streaming from Groove!? You guys are making a huge mistake that will not only harm Onedrive, but will ultimately harm and possibly end a ton of other Microsoft services.
I genuinely hope someone (or several someones) on the Onedrive team lose their jobs over this anticonsumer mess.
So a short timeline (of free SkyDrive/OneDrive storage) is in order 25GB->7GB(+15GB)->15GB(+15GB)->5GB
Yep this is normal progress in a “Mobile First, Cloud First” world. I’m not sure how making a service that has less space and costs more than Google and Apple (and let’s be honest sync has been getting slower for years) will make anyone use this service voluntarily. Now it will be set up by default on Windows, immediately complain about no space, and be summarily disabled. I just don’t see the end game. Where does the profit come from if no one has a chance to store more than a $2 flash drive on the service before paying (how would a user even know they like it, yet)?
PS. As a customer who has been with you since my storage was 25GB (that in every previous act of crazy you specifically grandfathered), am I to assume my 40GB free will become 5GB??? (The FAQ stated my 100GB is safe for now, but I should probably make arrangements to move that – how convenient that Google charges the old rate of $1.99 for 100GB.)
OneDrive is most key component for bussiness user. OneDrive is a decisive blow to adopt Azure. If MS stops the unlimited service, many bussiness users will shift their system from Azure to AWS, also from Windows 10 to iOS.
It seems MS give up their cloud service itself.
Are you completely crazy??? M$oft? 50GB for all the family pictures… Ridiculous…
This is absurd! I had really started to embrace OneDrive and considered subscribing to Office 365 largely for the unlimited storage. There’s no way I’m subscribing now. Not only is the unlimited storage off the table, but what’s next? What’s to stop Microsoft from cutting Office 365 home from 5 installations to 3, for example? Microsoft has gutted not only the value of their service, but also public perception and trust. When people perceive the value of a product is unstable and they do not trust the company selling it, they don’t buy it. This is not the way to get people to love your product.
Wow! OneDrive officially lost out to DropBox. This is surrender.
Disappointing move from Microsoft.
This just made Google Apps much more palatable.
As a OneDrive customer, the OneDrive plan changes just made it more comparable to a Google Apps account which offers more than just storage and online doc editing.
Microsoft, you should seriously reconsider your plan to roll back storage for existing users from 15 to 5gb. These users are your bedrock, the ones who championed you from the start of Skydive. You really should reconsider going back on your word with US.
Hope this blog was published by a Temporary Worker’, and Microsoft can make some kind of apology.
I am one drive fan liking the service for the amount of stuff i can do with the colud service. i was one of the guys who got it earlier.
This is such a disappointing news to me. You should not do this because some small section of poeple is misusing this service.
Very Bad for you Microsoft. You are just trying so hard to push away your fans, dumping more and more reasons on people to hate Microsoft. Dont do that.
Please for all of you following the comments here, please keep spreading the word and request that people come here to comment. Especially since UserVoice is being shut down.
OK. I will go to google drive now. Good bye, OneDrive.
This is really nasty ********.
Just because some people took you for a word (UNLIMITED, WHY DID YOU NAME IT LIKE THAT?!) does not mean ALL users should suffer the consequences.
You know what this is? Screw the minority. Screw us who actually use 5~GB, for out photos and such. And than extort me to buy plans (which are now ridiculously more expensive than the competition).
Well guess what? Those users are the ones who were switching other people to you devices and services. No more. So you can continue shooting yourself in the foot.
First you take away the intelligent file-syncing Windows 8 had, and now this!? OneDrive is the only file-storage service that gets progressively WORSE over the years. The only reason I’ve been using it has been the file storage.
As a photographer and videographer, I felt comfortable knowing I had a backup of my work with you guys, but I can no longer rely on that. “Disappointed” doesn’t even begin to describe it.
WOW.
I hope it’s a joke. First of all, you should fire some people in legal department. Someone forgot to add “fair use” clause for the unlimited storage ?
Second, punish most of your customers because of a few heavy usage accounts is something that children do, not grade A companies.
I’ve been an advocate for OneDrive for many years now, recommending the service and Office 365 to my family and friends. Using it as my daily driver cloud storage, switching people to your cloud and mobile platform and now this ? You know what, I care less about the loss of the storage space as I do for you making me look like an idiot in front of my family and friends. Thanks for that.
This is a stab in the back.
If your goal is to kill the service all together, at least man up and say so.
Very bad news!
Cutting down free allowance (15GB) and camera bonus (15GB) to a total 5GB Free allowance… is an extremely bad news for casual OneDrive users.
So, DropBox, Box etc. here I come!
Microsoft has yet to learn the lesson that customers are fickle creatures and will gladly, most of us anyway, turn to wherever we need to go in order to obtain trustworthy, quality service in exchange for our money. You’re blowing it here, big time!
Who was the product manager who went bananas? This is a bad move. I love your service, but this is horrible
Oh, ****. only 5GB for backup image.
Bye bye Onedrive
I’ve been a OneDrive user from its very early days, but I will cancel my subscription following these changes.
I know we can’t sue you as you must have left some loopholes in the contract, but I will definitely not subscribe O365 anymore, even though I do not need so much cloud storage. You are losing your reputation by doing this. You said we could have unlimited storage, YOU ARE A LIAR.
My trust in this service has been betrayed. I no longer trust Onedrive with my files.
I know we can’t sue you as you must have left some loopholes in the contract, but I will definitely not subscribe O365 anymore, even though I do not need so much cloud storage. You are losing your reputation by doing this. You said we could have unlimited storage, YOU ARE A LIAR.
SHAME FOR YOU
Tired of radical changes. I’ve been a Microsoft loyal but tired of all this **** now. I’m done.
I’ve been using OneDrive since the early days of SkyDrive and I have more than 300GB of storage from Surface and early adopter bonus. I will cancel my Office 365, demand a *full* refund, and move my files back to my NAS.
I will also file a complaint to the BBB. The OneDrive team, you should really be ashamed of yourself. MSFT spent the last 2, 3 years to rebuild the trust with its power users, and you managed to destroy all that hard work by a blog post.
This is a really awful thing to do to your (soon former) Users.
Okay, so a few people abuse the ‘unlimited’ storage you put in place, and you decide to punish everyone as a result? Even the Camera Roll bonus..really?! Like it’s not hard enough being a poorly treated Lumia fan.
Well, your service is about to get faster, because quite frankly you’re going to face a mass exodus. No wonder Thurrott left your slow service months ago. I’m out too.
Only Microsoft would believe that the reason many consumers have purchased Office 365 subscriptions since the announcement of availability of Unlimited storage was because the world all of as sudden got a massive Viagra-induced plumper at the thought of being able to create Word documents by the thousands as opposed to storing pictures, music, and videos. You just took away practically the ONLY selling point for an Office 365 subscription for consumers in the face of stiff competition from Dropbox and other free Google Docs offerings.
**
Limiting the free limit to 5gb is a joke, and puts onedrive far behind other offerings like Google.
Firstly office documents count towards that limit (unlike google documents which are quota free on google drive). And you expect people to use onedrive with office 2016 and Windows 10…
Although google docs isn’t as polished as office, it does a pretty decent job and quickly catching up.
Next Google offers free photo backup. Although the resolution is limited it works perfectly fine for me and my thousands of photos from my phone. There’s also Flickr for high res photos at a generous free 1tb limit. Onedrive was ok with the 15gb camera bonus for most but does not stand a chance without.
Finally music is again free to upload on Google music. In fact, I haven’t bothered with Groove for that very reason, and this move is simply throwing that idea under the bus.
I don’t see how making the storage plans more expensive than iCloud will do you any favors either.
This is a really dumb decision. Users want a good product and value for money – neither of which is offered by onedrive’s new plan. Falling behind the other alternatives will do nothing to achieve Microsoft’s “Cloud first” vision. And nowhere near second place for that matter.
Do what the others suggest to deal with service abusers, but don’t screw over your customers Microsoft.
SHAME ON YOU!!! Microsoft!!! My usage stays around 8GB for 2 years. I’ll move to GOOGLE DRIVE if this ****** notification really comes to me
Microsoft completely killed their credibility. Bait and switch. How do they expect people to trust especially giving away windows 10 for “free”.
Slap OneDrive..
OneDrive literally has 0 advantages against Dropbox/Google drive now…
去你妈的微软
What about with the 100GB bonus by Bing rewards and dropbox?
What the ****? 5GB? I get cutting out the unlimited options because people were abusing it, and maybe even discontinuing the 15GB camera roll bonus, but chopping it down to 5GB? Why should I keep using OneDrive now compared to Google Drive?
Ok, I have been. holding back 3 Windows 10 upgrades due to the ****** state of the Win 10 OneDrive sync client (not supporting SD cards). Now I am really irritated, I was never going to use unlimited, but based on your own words, you could have set the limit to 10 TB or something. Your offered unlimited and people took you at your word. Now you renig. I don’t know what happened in theOneDrive department, but I would hate to be working there right now. It shows all the signs of a rapidly sinking ship. And this is sad because in Win 8.1 it was totally awsome. I am flabbergasted at how a company can so significantlyt ****** defeat from the jaws of victory. You had something great, something to be prowd of, and you are totally messing this up. I know you likely don’t read all these posts, but if you catch this one, please I beg you, go back and read all them. These are your loyal fans. For gods sake, who do you think reads these blogs… People who give a ****. People who have the capability to make a choice for them, their families, & others.
Google can offer 15GiB and I didn’t even buy any of their products. I bought multiple Lumia phones and you’re cutting the camera storage down to 5GiB?
I guess I’ll take my business elsewhere.
Well, wow!
– You don’t have functional “albums” – a feature you so loudly harped about
– You don’t have a stable “uploading” mechanism – my windows phone frequently barfs on multiple-uploads
– You have a sub-par sync client as compared to Dropbox
– You’re not even fully cross-platform: you don’t have a Linux client
And you have the ******** audacity to **ck your users over without actually getting your own s**t together for once? Well, you know what? F*** You OneDrive.
Not to mention their high-quality music streaming to Windows Phone devices out of the Music folder. Works for 1 / 10 songs at best, suffers from cache corruption, file conflicts, extreme index slowness, etc. More quality.
@Satya Nadella, you have done a great job as CEO, Windows 10 looks good, Microsoft seems to be a better company and now this. I have been a huge Microsoft fan but this is taking to far.
So glad I didn’t renew my Office365 for a year after trying it for a couple months. Almost stayed because I had everything setup with Groove Music and was going to rely on the unlimited storage for photo backup. Because of this change of heart from Microsoft, its understandable, but horrid for users. If we can’t rely on it later on to be there, it will be tough to use as an archiving service for media which most of us intended to use it for. Since Windows 10 came, and destroyed the mobile interface for Microsoft, I have since transitioned to the iPhone after many years of hoping Microsoft was having a change of face and was on the road to success. Glad I changed, Apple is not only cheaper for the middle plan (1$ vs 2$/mo, though the 1TB deal is sweeter with MS), but seems to offer much more customer focus services and details that just bring that apple magic to their devices. Adios Microsoft, it was decent while it lasted.
This is ridiculous. I’m done with this. How much does it honestly cost you to reward those who have been loyal to you for years? I’ve been with Windows Phone since it began, I have an Xbox, a surface Pro, Windows 10, Office and was about to buy the new 950. I am legitimately your perfect mindlessly loyal consumer. A half decent OneDrive storage quota was the one and only thing I could point to as a reward for that loyalty and now you’re tearing that away. Don’t try to pass the buck onto the minority of people who are using more than what you anticipated when you set your limits. The 15GB limit has zero impact upon that.
Classic bait and switch tactics to get people in then the sucker punch. I’m done advocating for Microsoft. I’m starting the slow and painful transition away from the MS ecosystem from today.
I EVEN TRIED TO USE BING FOR A WEEK GOD **** IT!!
I really don’t know what M$ is thinking about.
I subscribed zune pass, bought zune, purchased an early Xbox360 with RRoD and 1st-gen Surface RT.
Now they cut off my OneDrive.
Good job. Really.
I’m moving to iCloud Drive anyway.
So you’re trying to seriously damage your image and additionaly the image of Windows Phone with it?
What a bad and stupid move. The bad press generated by this will have a serious impact.
Why in the **** is everyone saying that it is “understandable” that Microsoft is limiting people from Unlimited to 1 TB? It is patently NOT understandable by any stretch of the imagination.
They advertised and sold “UNLIMITED”. That should be the deliverable. No different than the FTC, FCC, and DOJ recently arbitrated with US cellular providers about. Unlimited data means just that: unlimited data.
In this age, 1 TB is NOT a large amount of data anymore and is frankly a pittance for those who work in engineering disciplines like myself. 10 TB would have been acceptable, even for a price increase, but to limit to 1 TB makes the service *too* limited for my use and probably for most other power users as well. They bought their Office 365 subscriptions with the intent of likely using more than 1 TB but not necessarily 75 TB as the example that was given. Therefore, 1 TB is not a sufficient limit and makes the service useless.
Yall are stupid as bricks for killing off the literal only reason why people used your inferior product. Too bad I have a prepaid card for another year of Office 365 that I can’t refund but thanks for the headache in a few months when I have to pay for 2 cloud storage services at the same time so I can transfer my excess files off OneDrive.
Good bye Microsoft; this was an incredibly stupid decision and I honestly question the intellectual capabilities of the people that work for this incredibly incompetent company.
Bill Gates is a swindler.
As someone who specifically switched from Dropbox and Google drive to one drive and the 365 office subscription this is a huge disappointment. Rather than crack down on the users who are obviously using in excess, you use them as a convenient excuse to remove space from everyone? And even the camera roll bonus? Are your business divisions in sync? You launch new phones and surface products then take away a great support feature that helps with marketing? At the very least, the removal of the camera roll space is something that needs to be reconsidered by your upper management, as this has nothing to do with the excessive users you point out.
A huge disappointment coming from Microsoft at a time when you all are hitting a good high.
*** Microsoft? Why are you making me hate you as day goes by? And **** your #upgradeyourworld if thi is how you gonna continue!
Wait. When did you guys re-hire Ballmer? “Cloud storage? No one’s gonna want that. It doesn’t even have a real keyboard!”
This is a very bad idea…
If you keep this decision of punishing normal users (I’m ok with 1TB limit) then I’m going to change to DropBox – which has a much superior file syncronization technology!
I can understand limiting people who are backing up 75 TB, but what does that have to do with 15GB for free users or the 15 GB bonus for photo backup? It’s one thing to come out and say ‘we need money from you to offer this service’, but framing it that way (a small number of people are ruining it for you) is dishonest. Goodbye!
This is it! I am done with msft bs. Despite all the odds I was trying my best to use my lumias, msft services and I was trying to persuade people to use vs, one drive, surfaces, lumias. I guess there is no point in trying when the company doesn’t give a *** about their customers. We have very low upload speed here I tried like a month to upload all my documents, backups and pictures.
1) I am done with onedrive, will use google drive,
2) I was planning to get 950xl, now I’ll sell both my lumia 920 and 640xl and get a nexus or 6s+ ASAP,
3) I had 2 office 2013 licences (1 hup and 1 regular pro) and was planning to buy 365, *** 365, will use gdocs. Sadly I have to use office at work.
4) I was planning to buy a surface 3 and a dell xps 15 infinity, *** both, will get a macbook pro as soon as I find a good deal.
5) I was planning to use vs to develop my next mobile app and target android, ios and universal windows platforms. *** uw apps and vs.
Now I won’t have to deal with all the hurdles, shortcoming, policy changes, os reboots, framework reboots and do something productive.
Well done ms. I applaud you for being such a ****. I hope the one who wrote this arrogant blog post would get fired.
My advice is to check your country’s laws. If you bought Office 365 retail (activated by code) and have the email confirming the unlimited storage. Microsoft made the offer and can’t take it back for existing subscribers, only for new ones. Don’t cancel or ask for a refund, check it with a lawyer first.
it doesn’t matter how much it is, if people have abused it or not. It’s not consumers problem.
Based on when these changes take effect, it seems that after their original subscription expires, they would have to capitulate to these new demands when they try and renew their subscription anyways.
That depends on local laws too. The confirmation email granted unlimited storage as long as you keep an Office 365 subscription. They can’t change the contract terms like that, it is false advertising.
15 gigs free to 5…rediculous!! and elminating the camera bonus also!! Microsoft come on!! This is not what you want to do to your customer’s, especially since you promoted the camera bonus less than a year ago and more importantly, giving only 5 gigs of free space is just not acceptable nowdays. You will loose for sure many users because your new $1.99 per month for 50 gigs is way to expensive in comparison to other backup services who offer much more space for the money. You need to reconsider this move and grandfather in existing free account amounts as an option or better yet drop this change completely. Another bad decision for sure!!!
You just killed the only reason I was using OneDrive (1.2 TB but stable)
I have a free university Office lincese and still bought the 365 subscription just for the OneDrive space.
Now I will have to look somewhere else. And guess what! Office it’s not so integrated there so I will probably be moving away from Office too
So why don’t you discontinue OneDrive whatsoever? I mean, what the **** is the point of even having a 5 GB storage? First you integrage OD in all your products, then this? I’m seriously annoyed.
This is exactly how not to treat your customers. Suppose, I’ll have to get back to using Google Drive / Dropbox .. I loved the new Microsoft, but this is madness.
Sorry, I will stop using OneDrive and switch over to Google Drive. The 50GB Plan is not enough for my data. Goodbye OneDrive!
I’ve used OneDrive since day 1 and recommended it to so many people. I won’t be able to do that anymore. How could such an unbelievably stupid decision make it past the desk of a leader like Satya? I was truly hoping Microsoft’s days of shooting itself in the foot were gone. I was gravely mistaken.
Hello Microsoft,
it’s a very bad idea to restrict existing users. It’s also not very clever to sell “unlimited” storage and get mad if somebody uses 75 TB – what did you expected? Don’t make unrealizable promises! I’am very disapointed.
I am getting more and more disappointed from Microsoft! Can’t understand your strategy! You keep promising things and suddenly you turn direction. Think about it first before you promise stuff and PLEASE don’t punish the wrong people!
Thirs is a bad idea.
There used to be a fair amount of reasons to use OneDrive over other storage.
I convinced many people to switch because of the extra storage for photo back up, ect.
Nearly every university student I encountered used Dropbox or Google Cloud. Lots changed over for photo back up and extra space.
Now your punishing everyone.
I currently have an iPhone and thought iCloud was a joke because even with my normal usage iCloud is not enough to back up all my photos off the phone.
You try and make out your lumias have great cameras and you won’t even let your users store the photos!
Finally, when you offered unlimited storage, what did you expect!? That some people wouldn’t use lots of it!? The word unlimited means, use AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE! if you meant anything else, the. You should look up what happened to mobile phone carriers who claimed unlimited data that was capped.
I currently have the 365 account and have a very small amount used, over the 5gb allowance that will be imposed by normal users, but no where near the 10TB you offered! Not even passed 1TB. But even so, I won’t be renewing because changes like this make me loose confidence in the stability of a service.
Wow just freaking wow! You idiots take two steps forward then four backwards. Wonder how you’re going to screw your enterprise clients over now.
Poor decition!!!
You will loose lots of clients because of that.
I can’t believe you’re going backwards where all others are going forward.
I better wake up to a retraction. Did y’all hire the Taco Bell guy who was just fired or something?
This is just unheard of. Really makes it hard to be a fan of your company. You offered unlimited storage so people used it without limits. What else did you expect them to do? And about that 15GB – absolutely disgraceful. People’s needs in storage constantly rise. You could’ve waited a year or two and the users would come to you themselves and buy storage for storing photos from those new flagships with crazy megapixels and 8K video or whatever. What a letdown. This is not the New Microsoft but the old one, at its worst.
Don’t you know that someone including me use your service because others was limit the free storage of 5 GB so I decided to try OneDrive. It give 15 GB plus with photo backup that’s up to 30 GB, I was very happy and recommend friends, family to use it. Now, you going to cut down to all of your users due to someone misuse your service. Do you think this is fair for all people?
Bad move. Now think what I’m going to do with my ms account.
I cant believe you are cutting my phone photo storage. its like you dont want me to use your services anymore?
And what the **** has my photo storage got to do with some idiots using 75TB of your unlimited plan?
Grrrr. Making me angry MS
After reading this, I moved my files from my “SkyDrive” (!) to my “Dropbox” folder, turned off camera upload on my smartphone and enabled it in the Dropbox app.
Bye OneDrive and hello iCloud.
Seriously.. Microsoft, I really have nothing to say (well I do and will), but seriously.. you guys are operating like you have no sense of your customer base. None.
I’m usually one to brush over major corporations, making drastic changes, turning their backs on their customers, lying basically. But, this is utterly ridiculous. I’m mainly upset because I used my own trust in your word, to place my word on a recommendation for YOUR service. Many friends, family, co-workers, colleagues, bystanders, I recommended OneDrive to, solely on the principle they you offered more storage for free and if you subscribed to Office 365 (because plenty of them needed the software or were going to use it), you would also gain an UNLIMITED amount of storage. Then you decided to just cut the cord? Because 1% of users (even if it was 10%) uploaded movie collections? WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN? No, seriously.
When you guys at the OneDrive division of Microsoft, collectively sat down to discuss your competition, how you could be competitive, what you could do for your loyal users and decided on UNLIMITED storage, just what crossed your minds? A few customers uploading some kitten pictures, maybe a few food recipes taking up about 10MB, couple Word documents, a PowerPoint presentation here and there, a few home videos of the kids?
OneDrive Office round table discussion:
“…guys, they aren’t REALLY going to use an unlimited amount of storage, we’re good!”
What makes this a total pile of garbage, is how Microsoft didn’t see this coming. Don’t act shocked, you hire the best (well, supposedly judging from the direction this team just took) minds in the business to steer you towards the right choice. You gained FAVORABLY attention, through the media, your customer base and even had competitors attempting to match the offer (Amazon famously offered up unlimited storage). You even gained a noticeable amount of recommendations for an Office 365 subscription, because NO competitor offered the same level of storage and you also gained Office subscribers. Yet, here we are with a sorry post about how you had NO idea, people would ACTUALLY use your storage abilities to… and get this… an U-N-L-I-M-I-T-E-D level. Mindboggling.
I’m a little more irked by this decision, because I’m also fighting my emotions about WHY Halo 5 has no local co-op (that’s ANOTHER story entirely), but this just added fuel to the fire.
What’s the point now of OneDrive against any number of other options? Why am I subscribing to Office 365 (lets be honest, I’m not writing papers/documents to the level that would warrant $99.99 a year, I’m really not), but I WAS willing to play ball for the storage. 1TB of storage (when I’ve used approximately 2TB of your supposed “unlimited” 10TB allotment) is nothing. Yes, its more than enough for picture backups off cellphones, but for DSLR/RAW footage or pictures, where does that leave us? Movies when you are traveling abroad? Music collections? I mean that’s what storage is for, that’s EXACTLY what Cloud Storage is for, to eliminate the need for carrying anything extra. To have access from anywhere, for all that you need (sounds like a similar tagline I know). Where does tis leave us?
“Oh, just pick up another external HDD for cheap.”
That’s the problem with this entire decision. That someone will be foolish enough to make such a statement. Similar to your famous Xbox lead saying to buy an Xbox 360 for offline play. You guys are flipping and flopping, like fish out of the water. Stick to your guns.
I’m sure someone will say, “You’re not entitled to anything from these companies, your fault for dumping all your stuff on their servers!” Yeah, I’m not. Also, realize I have BARELY touched 1% of my available storage, with ZERO abuse. AS others have said here, instead of pinpointing these abusers or actually staying true to your word, we all are reduced to a pathetic level (considering where we were). My end goal was to use 10TB of my given UNLIMITED storage for YEARS to come. And keep my Office 365 subscription going for that same time. If that was 6 years, that’s $600 from just me. Do the math. Now, I’m back to having to find alternative options because 1TB isn’t going to do it. Also, strongly looking at this Office 365 subscription (because hey, Office Online is more than enough) and its ultimate value.
Bravo, Microsoft. Bravo.
As a fan of your services, a Windows Phone user, Xbox (TWO of them) owner, Microsoft Band 2 wearer, Surface owner, OneDrive user (well, that’s up for questioning), you just played me. Let’s not forget who Microsoft touts the use of OneDrive across ALL their devices. So, imagine my shock reading this post to find out I have a year to consolidate my measly 1.5TB of 10TB.
Once again, Bravo to you Microsoft.
You had us all fooled.
Rant over.
The “coming” unlimited OneDrive was the ONLY reason I signed up for Office 365. Ironically I’m just under 1TB at the moment after nearly 12 months.
I will NOT be renewing 365 if this is not reversed and simply revert to Office 2013 which is fine for my purposes and no doubt will be for many years to come.
Camera Roll bonus was a big plus as well. I use both Android and Windows Phone so guess which direction I’ll be going in the future?
I feel totally *** upon now. Windows 10 has been excellent. The past 12 months of MS have been great but what a way to make customers seek alternatives………….
Will I use MS in the future? Yes, I have to. Will I pay for “services”? Not now, not unless it’s 100% impossible to avoid it, and neither will my customers.
The End
Bad move MS! BAD MOVE!
They promised to give unlimited storage to users for a price which gives them a marketing edge over other competitors, now when people really start using what they paid for Microsoft is getting ******?
1. If they claim they are giving unlimited then why set 75TB limit for each user?
2. They sell unlimited package and when people use 75TB, how is that abusing the system? Unlimited > 75TB right?
3. Was Microsoft expecting people to save 300 kb .docx files in the unlimited storage files for which they were paying?
4. Why on the earth punish free users for this? Free users got extra storage because they remained loyal with Microsoft? Does, Microsoft think they did a favor to free users. I picked Onedrive over others because it gave me more benefits, if it was 5 GB from start i would have gone with other options and saved me a ton of pain to switch over.
Also,
Free -15 GB
Loyalty bonus -10 GB
Camera roll bonus -15 GB
Bing bonus -100 GB Valid through: 2/10/2017
so all this gone because some lead at Onedrive team baby raged?
Grow up Microsoft. Baby rage isn’t going to take you anywhere. I am moving all my stuff to Google, why? Because they are professionals and they don’t baby rage.
So a couple of users used 75TB of the “unlimited” space and now you make all the other users pay for your miscalculations? Make total sense to me! What a joke.
Most of the People switch the Service to other Like Google Drive or PCloud.
I think PCloud is a Best alternative for all these Drives with Extra Features,
That is a good news!I bless U!
That is a good news!I bless U!
This really sucks and as an longterm Defender for Microsoft as an “valuable” IT-Provider really, really disappointed!
But okay, you can make the rules. But then, be consequent and give all the windows 10 users a possiblity to deactivate onedrive and let users choose “the integrated” cloud provider for themself (and not onedrive per default!). The same mechanism like Browser, Media Player etc.
Just when I thought Microsoft was turning a corner and becoming a “leader” again in technology, they show how wrong I was to assume such nonsense. Looks like Microsoft’s lack of proper data management has gotten the best of them and their cloud service will now become one of many lost in the shuffle instead of LEADING.
Count me, my family and my friends OUT of Office 365 with about faces like this. What next? Is Microsoft going to reinstate the “Always Online/DRM” Xbox One? Stand by your product and make it the best! Don’t cower to mismanagement and leave the table with your tail between your legs! Deal with those abusing the system and lead!
This is a really terrible decision… Capping the storage to 1TB is one thing, but actually stripping people from their 15GB (+15GB photo upload) storage, for agreeing to upload their photos to you in the first place??
Way to thank your customers. Will probably move to a competitor if this is not a joke.
Bad form
Hello OneDrive Team,
Are you aware Microsoft is trying to change their image? How are these changes helping to drive that change?
Shame on you M$
Just started the one month trial. Won’t be subscribing now. No reason to. I’ll come up with another solution to store my family’s photos and video.
So you punish the 15gb users because the ones with paid/unlimited storage option abused it. The people that made this decision have never been on the receiving end of such downgrade because they get the MS bonuses and trinkets, but the average joe is getting rammed in the dark spot. Good one.
And what about the different bonuses, like Bing bonus, Enthusiast bonus or Loyalty bonus? Are these going away too?
I’m planning in buying a new Lumia. The MS Store still says it comes with 30GB of Onedrive storage. Is this changing also ?
Haha we got you!
I don’t plan on screaming as loud as some here. Here are the facts of life: Not counting Office 365, we are still talking about US$10 for 1TB of space, which is comparable to what DropBox and Google is offering for similar data size (1TB). I hadn’t tried DropBox but overall the user experience I’ve had with OneDrive is at least no worse than Google.
Sitting here, I’ve never really gotten the invite to the unlimited plan. However, for about as long as I can remember, OneDrive has been giving me, a new Office 365 user, 10TB, which is great. I’m really happy. Even happier than Unlimited because the old saying goes there is nothing more expensive than “Unlimited”.
I won’t begrudge Microsoft for reducing free storage – they’ll definitely lose some customers for this but it’s their choice and I think free users only have so much moral strength to bargain for terms.
Still, OneDrive is definitely in third-place, behind Dropbox and Google. If Microsoft wants to win, it can’t offer the same deals as everyone else. The Office is a start, but so would multi-terabyte storage for the same price.
Wow, isn’t it predictable that all the freeloaders are the ones who leave comments on a story like this? Go ahead, go to Google Drive or Dropbox. This “unlimited” data was a stupid Ballmer-era move to buy customers that never should have been offered in the first place that Nadella is wisely un-doing.
The problem ISN’T the “unlimited” data. It’s that the move along with all of the plan changes could’ve been avoided or not offered at all. Microsoft, a company with tons of usage statistics and an awareness of the tech world should have looked at the failures of the past cloud storage providers and come to a realization that they were over promising and under delivering. They are cutting their free storage uses down to a third of their previous storage space. From an amount offered by ALL of their competitors. They’re showing their hand and cannibalizing their product. How can anyone trust them to do what they promised or offered a compromise for the users that were not abusing the system. A system their WHOLE platform going into the future is based on. Are they going to start charging me hourly for access to the computer I paid for?
I’m back, to point out my own statistics. This is basically what I’m set to lose, because someone, somewhere, in this world uploaded a movies collection to 75TB. Let’s not forget that UNLIMITED has ..uh, no limits. But, lets not get into the true DEFINITION of the word unlimited.
Here’s where I am at:
Free Storage: 15GB
Loyalty Bonus: 10GB (keyword LOYALTY)
Office 365 Subscription: 10,240GB
Groove Music Pass Subscription: 100GB
Camera Roll Bonus: 15GB
Bing Bonus: 100GB (yeah, a LOYAL Bing user, who would of thought)
Total: 10.2TB
Available: 9.8TB
My previous post I miscalculated, due to my utter disgust, what I was actually using. Seeing this makes it even worse. I’m reduced to nothing, because you guys can’t regulate or at least KEEP 10TB, as the limit.
I’m angry now.
I’m not here to complain about the unlimited data storage which I kind of always found a ridiculous idea. But stopping the unlimited storage is one thing and going down from 15Gb to 5Gb is totally insane. How do you think you are going to attract people to your ecosystem ?
Idiots…
WoW, this is why we can’t have nice things….Bad move and bad reaction
GIVE US REASONABLE REASON!
WHY THE **** BECAUSE SOME USER USE 75TB EVERY USER DOWNGRADED FROM 15GB TO 5GB? AND WHY THE **** YOU DISCONTINUE THE CAMERA ROLL BONUS?
WHY DON’T YOU JUST PUT A PRICE TO THAT SOME USER THAT USING MORE THAN 1TB?
The way you are taking these measures seem like you want to cut off your head just because you have headache, so that it never occurs again.
So, based on this post and the other news sites, I pay for Office 365 Home and opted in for the ‘unlimited’ cloud storage. I currently see 10 TB available on my OneDrive. That will go down to 1 TB only, right?
If so, that’s just pure bullscheisse.
Time to move my files to Google Drive…
Just moved to OneDrive 2 months ago. This is a huge disappointment.
I will move back to Google Drive or some other service.
Wow, this is weirdest thing from ms I have seen so far… Losing the unlimited is one thing, and not so bad. But the 5gb and 50gb stuff… Wow… It’s like you want people to use other services.
This really is a shame to hear about.
One of the best things about OneDrive was the storage space offered, and it also provided a very strong value proposition for Windows Phone devices.
You removing any and all incentive to use the platform will cause a lot of nasty backlash (as evidenced here and other places this news was posted), and will likely result in many users moving to a new provider.
Myself, I will very likely stop using OneDrive and transition all my files to Box.
Bye OneDrive.
Hello Google Drive.
In addition to everything else, I find this concerning:
“Since we started to roll out unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 consumer subscribers, a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings. ”
How does the OneDrive team know what’s inside their users’ storage? Under what circumstances does the OneDrive team go looking at users’ documents, photos and videos?
What concerns me the most is that Microsoft must know that the basis of cloud storage is first and foremost: TRUST. That trust will now forever be diminished. How can i or anyone, in good conscience, now recommend any of Microsoft’s services without warning them that at any moment what you thought you were getting has been altered and is possibly no longer even fit for the required purpose.
I am most disappointed that Microsoft values the trust I place (Placed) in them so cheaply…
wow i was from the service from day one, now i’m leaving if that is how you treat loyal customers
Oh Microsoft…..
okay….
removing OneDrive (click
that is a really BAD IDEA to cancel camera bonus (15GB) and cut down basic plan (15GB to 5GB)
very bad decision, and as a microsoft loyal user and promoter i’m ashamed
This is disgusting. They baited me to switch from Google Drive, Now when I’ve got more than 1TB in there, they change the plan. Bloody unethical. Luckily, my office 365 home account is due in 10 days. I won’t be renewing. Now i will have to go thru the hassle of moving back to google drive. Microsoft jerks.
I stuck with Office 365 due to OneDrive’s value proposition. It is no longer there, so I will go to iCloud Drive so at least I don’t have to bother with two ecosystems. Thanks for removing any differentiation in your product, and instilling ill will with a loyal customer.
First it was 25 GB, then 7 GB, 15 GB and now 5 GB?! You are easily losing trust if you can’t make up your mind on what can you honestly offer to users.
Have a look at Dropbox, starting point is still 2 GB but extra storage can be gained easily and plans are cheap.
Google Drive – from 5 GB to 15 GB of shared storage, cheap plans and no fluctuations.
Also worth mentioning: MEGA, MediaFire, JustCloud.
Just make up your mind and stick to it, and it better be the 25 GB we were offered at first.
Microsoft really please consider following:
If one uses a Microsoft Handset (Lumia) or a Microsoft Surface, give those customers the 15 GB free storage back.
You really should have a more holistic approach in your customer orientation.
Give your _loyal customers_ a certain bonus above those who use OneDrive from an iOS or OSX machine.
What the **** is the supposed to mean? Just because I use OneDrive from my Macbook, then I’m less of a “loyal customer”? I’m actually a paying customer and use MS services daily. Don’t generalize people.
How touchy, I meant those who do not use anything from MS they have PAID FOR to MS other than the OneDrive Service, and get 5GB exactly as those who have bought a Lumia or Surface.
If you have bought another MS Product, you obviously do not fall in this definition.
Let’s make a new definition:
Those who are running Linux and using Open Office, get 5 GB as me who is running a Lumia and Office Professional (not 365).
Which user is loyal to MS?
Was that so difficult to understand?
Over the last year or so Microsoft has done some great things. The one glaring exception is OneDrive Consumer. (OneDrive Business has other issues!) It has been going downhill ever since the Live Mesh Beta days. When they cut that and gave us SkyDrive as a substitute, lots of functionality was stripped. The sync engine has been extremely dodgy ever since (I’ve had less trouble than many tho’). The Smart Placeholders was a step forward in 8.1, but they turned around and stripped that out in 10. In a January 2015 blog post they gave feeble excuses for their actions and promised shared file sync by about 10RTM and a substitute for placeholders by the end of the year. A very restricted shared file sync appeared well later than RTM and we’ve seen no sign of a placeholder replacement, nor a promised high performance reliable sync engine. A snail goes faster than the OneDrive team.
Now the space allocations are being slashed – to next to nothing for some people. Going downhill again!!!
What’s left now after everything has been emaciated. I had great faith in what OneDrive could achieve. I’ve now almost lost all of it. I never thought I would ever consider an alternative, but now I’m beginning to waiver. Can all the cloud functionality built into Win10 work without OneDrive? I doubt it, but can I live with the loss? Good question.
Please, someone in authority, do an audit of the OneDrive team’s performance over the last five years and give it a good kick up the proverbial.
I’m super dissapointed. Moving away from Onedrive.
Android, here I come. I won`t stay with onedrive. Thank you. Bye.
Just leave the 15GB+15GB plan alone for free accounts, and do 2TB or 1.5TB for the unlimited plans. Can’t be that hard and customers will understand…
Even if they revert some of these stupid decisions, damage is done already. It’s a huge blow to the loyal customer’s confidence.(and also MS IT-professional’s like me).
I had switched over from Google when MS finally had revamped Hotmail and with a decent storage capacity for non-subscription users. Webmail interface was a huge improvement and I liked it better than Google.
Being Microsoft I felt like this was a company I could trust to keep their service up and running and make it my online home. Family photos, documents, some file backups… basically only the important stuff. I just kept a local copy of my music/video and didn’t want to store all that online.
Now I’m being told I have 1 year to take my belongings (all 24GB of it .. GASP ) and leave.
It’s pretty much like getting evicted.
Sure I could pay for more storage… until Microsoft changes their mind again and paid users will get stripped of their storage and be reduced to 10GB and be told they have to pay more to get more… again… and again.. and again…..
Google!!… I’m coming home!!
This doesn’t directly affect me, since i pay for OneDrive storage, but it makes me look like an ******* for reccomending it to so many of my friends and family.
After getting everyone I share data with onto the ecosystem, you’re pulling the carpet out. Most of them are moderate users who are backing up more than 5GB, but were more than comfortable with the 15GB free cap. There is no way they’re going to pay for additional storage that they won’t use.
Well, the next stop for this train is Google-town, and I’ll never reccomend another one of your services. Microsoft, you’ve been generating a lot of good-will in the last year two. I you want people in your ecosystem, this is not how you go about it. Google and Apple are eating your lunch precisely because of policies like this.
Good Bye OneDrive!!! Hello Google Drive.
no surprise microsoft does not care for users. be happy microsoft management. we are out. next time don’t bring stupid ideas like skydrive, onedrive, bing, etc if you cant keep them up for more than a few years
Microsoft is unreliable partner. Few users upload 75 TB of data. So everybody must have only 1 TB? This is Microsofts doublespeak. The reason I subsribed office365 for home was that i do not want to care about free space (I did not exceeded 1TB yet).
Agreed, if they allow this to happen, it shows Microsoft can not be trusted for the future for your business or personal information. I really hate much of what Google does, but now I guess I have to use them.
This is a bummer. I really respected OneDrive for enabling the unlimited option and giving the large free 15gb cloud storage space. These changes are really disappointing and completely disregarding users who have been sticking onto the service, or even those loyal users since the early Live Mesh days.
For me, I have made cloud storage plans and proceeded to transfer data around to fit within the allocations given, and I am sure I am not alone on this. Putting a blame on the extreme users does not justify this course of action. If it is down to cost, just admit it and move on…
What a way to annoy your users. For a company trying hard to win back users, you are trying equally hard to keep committed users to your services.
Time to cease using Windows Phone – it was aslways pain and without a chance to backup it (5GB is too low for backup the phone with photos) I’ll switch to apple, instead of Lumia950. Good bye ‘discontinuum’ feature.
You have effectively killed Windows Phone, OneDrive,Outlook and my faith in Microsoft. Discontinuing the camera roll back up takes away one of the best advantages of Windows Phone. And removing most of the storage punishes your loyal customers and kills one of the reasons I have been pushing Outlook.com. In my 30 years of being a proponent for Microsoft this is by far the worst decision ever made.
Please fire those responsible and do not let this happen.
As an Office 365 subscriber I realize, even being dropped back down to 1TB and 5 copies of Office, this is still the best deal out there however, it’s now become a trust thing. Google has offered 15GB for free for ever and have NEVER backed down. This is a horrible move. Guess it’s time to pull my stuff off OneDrive and go with a company that’s not **** bent on screwing over their customers and giving them less for more.
Was on the fence about getting a Windows phone and trading in my Mac for a Surface. Thanks for taking that decision completely away.
Trust is a big thing, you royally f’d that up!!
Very very big mistake by MS.
I always use OneDrive to save my design homework. It must overs 5 GB. You can image that on PSD file is over 100MB easily. If the policy continues, I must leave and use another cloud.
MS says that one platform, but she doesn’t support their cloud user. You must know that cloud storage is very important for connecting different platform into one.
So sad…
That’s it then. I’m going to have to go over to Google Drive now, the company with whom I used to have a sweet deal whereby I was locked in to a low rate due to early adoption, but to whom I deserted in order to take up with OneDrive as the deal looked so good. People are right, this looks just like a bait and switch and I feel like I’ve been conned. I’ve spent the past couple of years recommending Microsoft to everyone but now that’ll have to stop.
This is a shortsighted decision that doesn’t focus on the customer. You now have many people already using and ready to try Windows 10 and use the extensive Microsoft cross-platform apps to have the “mobility of experience” across their devices from Android, iOS and Windows. But forcing them to use 5GB is simply ridiculous. How is that new user going to take advantage of syncing his smartphones to his Windows device? What about that person who buys a low cost Windows Device with only 64Gb storage? How will they sync their data and be more productive?
This announcement appears to force the hand of the user to switch to Office 365. There is no denying that it is a great service, but you seem to imply that one MUST have Office365 to be “productive”. What about the users who already standalone licenses of Office? What the users who have no need for Office365? Why limit their options to get adequate storage.
Making the majority of users pay for the sins of a few seems to be a “smoke and mirrors” reason, and something that could have been addressed by less drastic means. If the real reason for this change is capacity struggling to keep up with demand, then simply say so. In addition, since no one from the “OneDrive Team” has even bothered to sign their name to this announcement, it shows us that you are aware that it is not in the best interest of your customers, and further more that you are not even wiling to stand up and have a dialog with your customers.
I, along with the hundreds of Microsoft users who have taken the time to express their feedback, am very disappointed with this announcement and how it was disseminated. I hope that you all come to your senses and reverse this decision.
This is a TERRIBLE mistake. As a UK University making business plans around the unlimited storage, we will now have to revise these and take MS off the table.
SHOCKINGLY BAD PRACTICE.
There were other ways of achieving this… Google it is then.
*** you M$. Switching to GDrive instead, 15GB free and $1,99 för 100Gb extra. Unlike your $1,99 for 50Gb….
15GB + 15GB Bonus for Picture Upload -> 5GB? 5GB? 5GB?
Google Drive 15GB +35GB = 50GB for free.
What can i do with 5GB? Nothing!
Realy? So i have to chance to google drive and must buy an android phone anstead of a windows phone… and 10 persons of my family too. Nice Microsoft… 😉
Terrible！！！！ HUGE BACK！！！ what I wanna say is, goodbye M$!
This is a lame move. I’ve been a OneDrive user since getting the extra free space as a student, but I’m quite disappointed by this move. I guess everyone already has other providers anyway, I’ll be switching to Google Drive probably, or I’ll just use one of the services that allow for multiple clouds like Koofr or Otixo.
This is just so mean,
Im absolutely with John on first comment. I was buying a Windows Phone years ago and I was so happy that windows phone users could get another 15GB of online storage. Thats 30GB for personal use and I’ve backed up all my documents and many photos into onedrive. Microsoft adverted for those benefits, users would get if they create a Microsoft account. Now with Win10, where you’re actually urged to have an account I was happy I could use my already owned one and backup important files to OneDrive. Okay abusing “unlimited” storage by archeiving their FullHD Media up to 75TB is definitely too much but decreasing storage to ALL users seems to me like they want to make money out of this situation. Remember: In times, when DropBox and MEGA adverted for up to 1TB Plans, MS touted to use theirs as you could get “unlimited storage”. MS also promoted for OneDrive, that you could store all your images in the cloud. Well, thats about 15GB in my case. Sure, let people backup their images and documents to free OneDrive with up to 15GB (or even 30 for MS hardware users) and after a time, just decrease that available storage. What should they do? If they still want to use the cloud service for that matter, they are compelled to pay for it. Microsoft is even perky enough to call that out now, so of you wanted more than 50GB of Cloud drive, you should better sign up for a plan fast as it’s not available from 2016.
Wrong direction, Microsoft! It’s not that 5GB wasn’t enough (actually 5! is definitely too less these days), I will backup to my own hardware then (and definitely not getting one of your plans). But you’re losing believe here. If you promote any benefit for Microsoft users in future, how could we know, that it’s not a hoax again?..
…oh and if you will force us to spend a single cent for Windows in future (which I’m pretty sure of after that OneDrive decision), Microsoft is dead for me.
*** YOU MICROSOFT AND ONEDRIVE FOR THIS ***. 5GB FOR ALL FREE? FOR CURRENT USERS? FOR NEW? CAMERA ROLL IS KILLED? WHAT ABOUT LUMIA WITHOUT SD CARD? YOU SAY “YEEAH, THIS FEATURE FOR YOU, ONEDRIVE FOR PHOTO IS FREE 15GB FOR LUMIA” *** YOU! YOU KILL ONEDRIVE…
I feel cheated because the free, unlimited and perfectly integrated storage was a major selling point for the surface and lumia devices I use (Lumia 930, Surface 2 and 3 Pro).
The major advantage of sufficient cloud storage space is the abililty to keep all data synced on all devices. Loosing that (or having to pay extra for it) seriously compromises the user experience.
為什麼要對沒有違規的會員做出這樣的舉動?應該針對違規的會員開刀,而不是用這樣的態度解決事情。我是office 365的用戶，也是微軟忠實的用戶，本來還想要買Surface 3，看來是不必了。
This is… *facepalm*.
OneDrive has steadily shot itself in the foot time and time again, changing from something that was a true brand ambassador into something I’m embarrassed to mention. I bought a Surface, with the 200GB bonus, and a Windows Phone, with the 15GB bonus. These bonuses contributed significantly to the value propositions of these purchases, even though I then didn’t use OneDrive. But, of course with all that space, I used it. And then saw the value in Office 365, quietly confident that I didn’t have to pick and choose which files I stored anymore.
Now, not only can I not imagine anybody making the choice to use OneDrive in the first place (especially those users with free university accounts who get into the confusing mess that is “OneDrive for Business”), but I am no longer confident in keeping my own files let alone recommending the service to anyone else for long-term usage. My confidence was based on the assumption that storage would only ever increase and become cheaper, with healthy market competition driving that. It would be such a dumb move to go backwards! Well, here we are.
I’m looking forward to the next press release announcing a re-think of this strategy. Take more than five minutes this time.
100% Agree!
How much of a reduction do I get off my Office 365 Home plan per month going forwards?
I can’t believe this decision was made so easily rather than trying to control the people abusing the service – Even if they were uploading large amounts, you advertised it as unlimited storage, so what does that mean exactly?
1TB for paying customers is not really enough – It should be 10TB. In terms of people abusing the service, you had every chance to control this. Unlimited customers only got 10TB initially anyway, and then had to request more when that was used up.
Obviously the “small number” of people abusing the service is just a cover. Your pioneering unlimited cloud storage lasted just over a year…
Are you out of your mind?
Every reputation earned by Windows 10 for your company could be ruined by this ridiculous decision.
I subscribed to the Office 365 subscription to preserve my important data like photos and videos produced in-house.It does not seem right to do all the same brush and be labeled as the “genius” who abuse the service.
Consider that indicate unlimited service when you launched your advertising message as the service. It could provide only 10 TB and stop, long-term add another 10 and so on.
I hope facades step back on this because I find it fair. At least considered the photographs and videos as unoccupied space.
Well I wont be renewing my office home subscription, very soon 1TB will not be enough for my photo collection, this is pathetic, are you mad?
I am very sad to read this. This is a terrible mistake. Because of some abusers, you are punishing your loyal customers! This is really bad practice!
You want users to upload their music to OneDrive and listen to it on all devices. How to do this with a 50GB plan (or just 5GB free space)?
You want users to upload their photos from their smartphones to OneDrive. How to do this, when you reduce the 15GB camera roll backup (while Google offers unlimited)?
You want users to switch to OneDrive with a by far inferior sync client compared to DropBox stability and performance wise and by offering so little free storage?
You want users to use Windows Phones, with an app problem, amongst many more looking at the current Windows 10 Mobile builds. Why not just switch to Android (which now have a really nice design language too), many more apps and unlimited camera backup storage?
You assured users one year ago of unlimited plans, something quite cool – a year later, you are killing it off. This results in trust issues, especially for companies which Microsoft really needs now.
WHY not just go a simple way and restrict the unlimited plans to 1TB again? But not kill of 100GB and 200GB plans. I as a longterm Microsoft user, and OneDrive/SkyDrive user from day one will soon lose my Surface & Bing enthusiast subscriptions. My intend (without hesitation) was to switch to the 200GB plan in February. Now, if this plan doesn’t exist anymore, If the 200GB plan doesn’t exist anymore, I will switch to DropBox which have a 1TB plan for 10$/month, a better sync client and office integration.
I think you are doing a major mistake and are killing of a very important part (if not foundation) of your ecosystem.
Dropbox has the best sync client but its more pricey, I could live with OneDrive but this is a big blow. What worries me most is that this change could be just the beginning, maybe OneDrive is being gradually phased out?
If you are in Europe now there is no reason not to switch to Hubic. its 50 euro for 10TB / year. The client was not great in the past but compared to Onedrive its not any worse.
How disappointing, i used since Skydrive providing 25GB then 7GB then change name into OneDrive, and now cut all the user into 5GB? Really? Using 1st Windows Phone HTC HD7 util Lumia 1520, and i still hoping to get Lumia 950 XL, but now? What? Give me any reason to continue support you please Microsoft
Please, I’m a loyalty, see this policy for OneDrive, maybe I should say Goodbye to it. Microsoft should punish those abusers(not us), this move is breaking the heart of the OneDrive fans.
You can always buy a £700 apple product and get no storage for free
Somehow I knew that before ,I dint Stored My pictures and documents on onedrive . You cannot trust microsoft on their offerings , and 15 to 5 GB that lot less than Google Offering .
Where can I get free 1 year office 365?
Why should we make of no violation of members such a move? Should surgery for violation of membership, rather than such an attitude to resolve the matter. I was office 365 users, but also a loyal user of Microsoft, had wanted to buy the Surface 3, it appears to be no need.
I feel cheated and betrayed. I’m a MS guy to all my friend. I use Windows, IE/Edge, Bing, Outlook, Office, Surface, Lumia, Band. I recommended OneDrive to countless family and friends. I’m also one of those who think the original plan for Xbox One was good, but just poorly explained.
But this announcement is terrible. For this single decision, you’ve lost my trust to not only OneDrive, but all of Microsoft. I’ll start looking elsewhere now, not only for cloud storage, but for every software, hardware, and service from Microsoft I’m using. Why should I trust you again after this?
I totally agree with you. I am returning the surface book.
We know what happened when Broadband plans and Cell phone data plans came out. They started with Unlimited but got capped.
What I don’t understand is, that Microsoft made this decision of providing Unlimited storage last year. Did they not even think of scenarios where this maybe abused ?
Did Microsoft not have perspective on offering unlimited storage from the flip flop of carriers pulling back on unlimited data plan of cell phone users? Surely you have a research team who crunches numbers and does some user behavior analysis prior to announcing services.
Microsoft must have seen this abuse coming before they even announced unlimited plans! To me this looks like a case of dangling the carrot of unlimited storage in front users to suck them into Microsoft ecosystem and then cut off the Unlimited storage plan purposefully!!!
Even me as a regular user can see clearly how this unlimited offer could be abused. BUT why the drastic cut in storage space from 15GB to 5GB ????
Just when I was in the middle of migrating all my photos to One Drive, MS does a U Turn. I was about to buy Lumia 950 phone so I could move everything to MS ecosystem but not anymore!!
Go to **** Microsoft!!! Who ever runs this One Drive team is an idiot!
BACK CAMERA BONUS AND FREE STORAGE!!!!
Camera bonus = 15GB
Free storage = 15GB
Total = 30GB
I have more 10GB Photos why i must delete this photo?
I go to Google Drive or Mege or iCloud. Cancel the changes or else lose Members. OneDrive meant a lot for my phone. I have to go to android ? So I’ll do it if you do not cancel changes to tariffs
Say “forever”?
Unbelievable！
So were moving back into the past? less and less storage for more money? If you want to be a company of the future you can’t go backwards instead of forward.
1TB for £7 a month is still one of the best offers around.
I can understand that the loss of some (mostly free) customers is probably counteracted by the few who will now start paying for OneDrive, at least in terms of revenue. What MS is not considering is the word of mouth effect this will create, discouraging new customers to join the ecosystem and later become paid users. They might benefit short-term, but on long-term, this is a bad strategy.
What is worrying is the decision to offer a worse service than before. This will cause trust issues with a lot of people. As clearly visible above, a lot of people will migrate very soon, and even the ones who stay will look up alternatives.
Mobile first, cloud first, eh?
Hello,
I am wondering, does anybody reading our comments from Microsoft?
But, think, probably not.
Microsoft, do you noticed something as company, I already noticed?
On OneDrive blog, no positive comments, a whole year!
You need to begin immediat investigation, who is destroying sistematicly the best cloud ever?
Yes.
OneDrive was the best cloud.
But, as we can see, 2015 and 2016 will be years of OneDrive complete distruction.
I am expecting the following blog post:
“Tuesday, march 17, 2018.
Dear valued users, we are sorry for any inconvenience, but, we decided to discontinue our OneDrive at all levels. We have a really negative trends last 12 months, even we tried to hold our beloved users. However, its not hard to see that competitors beat us on every aspect.”
Microsoft, why you think that your name is enough to pay you for nothing?
Not only those changes are horable.
Not.
Something more is much worse, dear Microsoft.
Its your relation with your customers.
What you think, who we are?
Just machines who making your profit?
A bunch of stupids?
Ah, no, Microsoft, no.
Your customers are often more inteligent and smarter than your few managers.
Believe me.
Try to believe me.
You are ignoring comments on your blog.
You are ignoring more than 29000 votes for turn placeholders back.
You are lowering space for free and paid users.
I have no unlimited space.
I have acceptable 1 tb.
Its honestly enough for me, but without placeholders, its nothing.
OneDrive have 0 advantage…
If anyone reads it, can you tell me, does any other cloud solution have something similar to placeholders?
I am depending on placeholders…
Ah, microsoft, great signature, the OneDrive team.
Who written this?
Mister Moore Moron?
I will use Google Drive, not Onedrive to save my data because it larger than 5G and Google is free.
If they need to ask 2$ for 50GB (before it was 2$ for 100GB) and reduce the space amount to 5GB for Lumia users (before it was 15GB). The reason is not that some users had 75TB of data.
Boo, not cool!
Let’s just get this straight!
First of all, OneDrive doesn’t compete with Dropbox, Google Drive or even iCloud for the simple fact that this is a service that can’t store file paths longer than 255 characters, it can’t (at least for me and my friends) share a folder for direct collaboration using ONLY the OneDrive app to sync said folder with all members. This, as unfair as it may sound to the developers behind this, a service from the 90’s built and marketed by a company of the 90’s.
This is a clear bait-and-switch! Don’t try to pin this on anyone using your service with the terms YOU established. I’m also a paying costumer, but not for long, I intend to ask for a refund TODAY! To be honest I only use about 200gb of my “new 1TB”, however I and most costumers feel cheated!
You’re within your “right” to change the terms for new costumers and renewals, but changing terms mid-subscription… that’s low, really low even for Microsoft standards.
Very disappointing. I’ve been (even successfully) convincing people of switching to Windows Phone, not least because of the good OneDrive integration and automatic photo backup. But for photo backups, the new free 5 GB plan is a joke. For most people that doesn’t even cover a week of taking photos and videos on a holiday. Is this how you encourage users to migrate to the cloud?
Seriously?
Kill off the abusers with a 1 or 2 tb limit by all means, but dropping the baseline to 5gb from 30gb?
Are you crazy?
This wont get you more o365 subs, this will DRIVE THEM AWAY. Me in particular.
Amazon offer an unlimited everything solution. I’ll be going there instead.
Which imbeciles run this OneDrive operation? First they use a trademarked name, then they kill their best feature (Win 8.1 placeholders), and now, just when MS is launching the 950 and 950XL, the free quota is being reduced to what? A few dozen 20MP photos and a couple of short 4K videos…. Microsoft really are clueless when it comes to marketing.
And this is the main reason you should NEVER trust cloud storage provider, they change plan / mind / charges, every time they want. Taking back things they gave you.
I can’t wait for P2P full encrypted cloud solution to raise and this olready obsolete buisness model to fall down!
I trusted you guys and shifted to Onedrive from Google Drive and THIS IS HOW YOU TREAT US???? Honestly, this is REALLY disappointing especially when I have been advocating Windows Mobile phones and Onedrive storage. REALLY disappointing that you are doing this. I am going out the moment I find a better service.
Punishing all users for the excessive usage of a small group is a very strange move and completely breaks the trust that users had in Microsoft as a reliable service provider. As a Mac user I was never a huge fan of Microsoft but I actually thought that they were on the right track with their recent product offerings, including OneDrive. Since I already get Office from work, the only reason for me to get an additional Office 365 subscription was the unlimited OneDrive storage for my personal data. I haven’t even used 1 TB yet but the fact that I can’t is enough for me to look elsewhere now, such that I don’t need to migrate all my data in the near future. Amazon “Unlimited Everything” looks like an attractive alternative and it offers a 3 month free trial, so I’m going to sign up for that.
Wow, I’ve been using OneDrive (nee SkyDrive) for years, over several computers and multiple windows phones. You made it easy to use (though the lack of placeholders in Windows 10 has made it a much worse experience) but I have been cautious with my usage and I currently have 7Gb stored on there.
So, after years of loyalty, I’m going to lose the ability to use OneDrive how I use it now, which is already hampered by the backwards step of Windows 10’s implementation of it, because of some specious reason that some people who were promised unlimited storage used it as such?
So my 15Gb camera backup bonus and my loyalty bonus all gone? You really want people to move to other cloud storage platforms, don’t you?
Why should I care about using seamless integration between my various Windows PC’s and phones if you’re prepared to pull the rug from under my feet in this way?
Ridiculous.
This is terrible decision.
I choose Window Phone because 15 free stoage OneDrive + 15 GB bonus camera roll. End now….
I think it is best to use a raid solution in a nas for those with speedy connections. terms changing too often to rely on. I also prefer to own my data
Tought of that too, too bad there’s no fiber in my city…
And seriously, i have 30gb 15 free+15 camera, and only have used 9gb, you gotta be kidding me, not?
I know what i have done wrong, trust you Microsoft.
Moving to GDrive, with 15gb, is more than enough for me.
How costly is offering online storage such that Microsoft needs to make a decision with such catastrophic consequences for customer loyalty? And how poor was their business planning one year ago when they thought they could afford offering “unlimited storage”? There are ALWAYS going to be people trying to abuse the system: just ask any mobile operator that offered All-you-can-eat data packages..
For me as an Office 365 subscriber this move has no short-term practical consequences because I am nowhere near the 1TB mark. But my illusion of Microsoft becoming a company with my interests at heart has been shattered.
I was gradually warming up to the idea of replacing my wife’s old Mac with a brand spanking new Surface Pro; I was seriously contemplating replacing the old PS3 with an XBox. But now I am thrown back to the dark days when I was seriously let down by Microsoft after enthusiastically (and admittedly with a bit of an Apple grudge) embraced Windows Phone 7 (!) and Surface (yes.. the first one..).
So they have just lost 3 years of effort trying to reel me back in as a Microsoft HW customer, and for me THAT is the big mistake Microsoft has just made.
Oh.. And I forgot to add that I don’t understand why there is no (monetary) compensation to me as a loyal Office 365 Home subscriber, but subscribers that were using a FREE service now get a FREE one-year Office 365 Personal Subscription.
So Microsoft, yes please: I would also like to get a one-year subscription redemption.
Oh my god. A really bad decission Microsoft. Office 365 is losing one of the things that make it better to another solutions.
Is this some kind of a joke? Has the blog been hacked?
5GB is enough to push me out of the MS cloud completely, how is this in line with any of MS current strategy?
***? Turns out now I have to lose my files or transfer them to another service?
Unbelievable. And it’s not so much the redaction of “unlimited” storage to 1TB, but the broken promise and the action that affects the average user that is the most infuriating. If Microsoft is going to advertise using OneDrive syncing with Windows phone, Groove music, and Office in general, then those files shouldn’t affect the total used space.
Personally, I have at least 15GB of pictures and videos taken with my Windows phones, so it’s especially ironic that the limit for non-O365 subscribers are also being punished.
This move is so far beyond ridiculous, it’s hard to articulate with G-rated words.
Just wanted to move my data from gdrive as I liked the online integration of office better, but I definitely do not require 1TB of online storage for my purposes. Especially the 200GB plan was a killer feature for me as it is reasonably priced and not available on gdrive.
This is a really disappointing change.
You have every right to punish the users who you think are abusing the service, but why got those innocent involved? Your action is just not consistent with your reasoning.
Please don’t decrease storage from 15 GB to 5 GB for all users. We must move our files if so. Just punish users with high quota.
Too bad, for me one of the main reason for buying Lumia Phones is gone than.
Hopefully Microsoft will reconsider this topic and leave it for causual users as it is.
Dear Microsoft,
I’m a Windows 10 and Windows Phone user and I believe that onedrive service is one of the plus that Windows ecosystem gives to the customers. I think is very stupid punish all one drive users to hit some that use the service in a not legal way.
You simply must set a strong gb cap per user and punish who try to use one drive in an illegal way.
Otherwise you’ll lost many users, and more problematic, it will be a boomerang against your intensions to build a strong ecosystem based on Windows. Google (and Android) thanks you.
So basically Microsoft is saying that they are no longer in the cloud storage for consumers business.
Classic bait and switch strategy. Never expected such a move from Microsoft. Couldn’t you really find a better pretense? From one of the best cloud storage solutions to just another cloud storage solution. Bye bye OneDrive, we had good times.
I was already on the move to abandon cloud storage because of privacy concerns (for example, how do they know what people with 75 GB of data store there exactly?) and in course of that decision didn’t add any new stuff to OneDrive for the past few months, but now this is just the reason to remove all the content that is still there (about 8 GB, not much private stuff, mostly my personal music collection) ASAP. Getting a Office 365 subscription now too keep that stuff is out of the question because it won’t pay off for me, I’m using Office 2013 standalone on exactly one machine and the feature set of it will be good for another seven years, so I would in fact lose money going down the subscription route.
Apart from my personal point of view: We were already at 25 GB of free storage before the Windows 8 days, then at 7 GB. Now going to 5 GB is ridiculous.
My advice: It takes a little effort to maintain, but I recommend everybody to check out a personal cloud solution. If you don’t need remote access, even a NAS server in the LAN is fine and that’s what I use at the moment. For all the content I need on the road: I keep all that on a USB thumbdrive in my pocket, or sync it to the phone storage. It’s not as easy as using a cloud storage provider, but at least you are in full control over your data at any time.
I really hope this is a joke,
what is the reasoning behind this? I have never seen a bigger own goal in my life…
and 5 gb?!?! why have any storage at all then?
Google drive& Photos – welcome me
It seems that there isn’t a “new Microsoft” after all with this reactionary decision made by a bean counter somewhere in Redmond. I am an Office 365 customer and have <2 TB, so I'm not the problem, but going to 1 TB destroys my workflow. I'll be requesting a pro-rated refund and going to Google Drive with the Office HUP and Google Docs.
The fact that they are cutting the free storage down to 5 GB and removing the free camera roll bonus is devastating to OneDrive and Microsoft. I was really enjoying that I could store my favorite Music and Photos on OneDrive and could access them anywhere on any device. OneDrive is what really tied me to Microsoft’s ecosystem. Its a shame that Microsoft feels like they need to punish everyone for what a handful of people have done. I guess I have to move on to other things…
Why………. T.T Why????? </3
Please don't drop the 15gb free to 5gb. also don't remove the 15gb camera roll bonus.. OneDrive is my primary cloud storage. Hope you guys hear our petitions. We are loyal!
how stupid this policy is, as you said, that is a small number of users, and even if they stored 75 tb content, they have nothing to blame. because OneDrive was able to do so, they will love and continue to subscribe the service, and now, you are losing them and more other customers. If OneDrive is focused on collaboration, then why did you let us choose OneDrive as default storage location. Also, if you want to save storage, you can simply using MD5 like file identification, to store only one copy of the file, this saves bandwidth and user’s time, but apparently no such thing exists in OneDrive. When problem arises, one should consider to solve it by yourself, not to affect customers. this policy made me rethink online storage, as the provider is not consistent on their services.
1 year for revision strategy. Not very clever. I have more than 1tb but it almost all my photos. And if somebody have 75 Tb with movies why you reduce my storage without movies? And why you reduce to 1tb, not 10, which I have now?
Bye OneDrive, Hello Google Drive!
Sad story..it makes me angry
It’s insane to get back what you have give previously….want to resolve the problem? erase unlimited space upper 1TB far all or who want more than 1 Tb pay more. But 15 GB free space for all,temp space bonus till the end 1 year,2 year)…it’s not fair to claim back what you gifted7ps. I bought 2 year Office 365 so for me no problem….bit my family,my girlfriend will switch to mega,google drive otherwise….50 gb and 15 gb free
Think to it,I’m not alone….Satya said: “mobile first,cloud first”: in this way you’re destroing cloud and mobile first
“stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings”
How the hack do they know what was stored?
Are they continuing to peek in customer’s e-mails, files?
Moving to some other provider which respect privacy.
Microsoft is loosing the user and forcing them to switch to google, which will eventually make Microsoft outdated. Microsoft don’t follow the steps of Nokia, if you are not in the competitions then one day you will be out same like Nokia. My first email and services i used is Microsoft, so love to be here don’t force to move us to other platforms.
Sure we have lot of choices now available, but what the users want is to stick to one platform. Come on grow up don’t be so mean, be the leader as you have been.
Oh well. I just transferred my files from OneDrive to Google. I was planning to get Office365 because of that unlimited (or 10TB) storage, but no way now. I have 680 GB of pictures now and was going to back those up to the cloud. Getting a new 3 TB external HDD costs €100, no additional costs.
Microsoft has again proved that it can’t be trusted. I have a laptop running Windows 10, mostly because it came with 8.1 installed, the most horrible O/S I’ve ever seen, and Windows 10 was a big improvement.
However, my desktop is running Windows 7 and it’s not going to get Windows 10 now. This “free” upgrade is very likely going to turn into a monthly subscription some time next year. No trust anymore.
Besides, I save money in other ways too as my current flatbed- and film scanners and inkjet printer aren’t supported in 10 thus upgrading would force me to buy new hardware as well.
The old 1TB limit would fix the Problem. Why must every user suffer? It is not necessary to change so much things.
So, basicly, Microsoft is punishing a whole group of users due to the fact some abused the unlimited storage. Microsoft could have seen this coming, if you offer unlimited storage, some people will use it. So why not maximize the limits to say 5TB. Most users would be happy with that. Except for some of the excesses.
But instead Microsoft is turning their back to a lot of users, most importantly by limiting the free storage from 15+15 to only 5 Gb. Like they did with Windows Phone 7.5 and currently the Surface RT which will not be updated to Win 10. Is this the same direction as the ‘free’ windows 10 update is going? Once everyone has upgraded to win 10, make it no longer free anymore and intead charge a monthly fee? Returning back to 7 as fast as I can, now it is still possible.
There are 3 Windows 8.1 phones, 2 surface RTs, a surface pro, 2 win 10 laptops, 3 win 10 desktop pcs and a Xbox One in my family. But Microsoft tells us ‘thank you, but go f**k yourself for being a loyal customer’. I really liked the integration of all those devices, but if this is the way Microsoft is pushing us, I’m going to invest in the alternatives like Apple and Google.
Just another reason to remove this **** from my computer, every time Microsoft release a new version of OneDrive features get dropped. Who actually sits down and thinks this is how to retain customers, idiots
I’m lucky …. was just ready to leave Dropbox … I stay with Dropbox
The obvious point to make in this move (which may already be made but there are so many comments I couldn’t actually read them all) is that the accountants have just noticed that MS are buying into DropBox but also giving away storage at a frightening rate. They have already paid for Nokia and lost big time as well as the surface RT experiment as well as all the other writedowns recently. Since MS are into making money, giving stuff away when they don’t really have to is probably a whipping offence now so lets just stop giving free storage except for just enough to sync favourites and settings between the various devcices and let someone else do the hard bit of managing lots of files for people. It is ok if people move their data out of OneDrive, it will still be there in the background doing just enough to make the user experience seamless (!) but not really costing MS anything much. That is the only reason to reduce the free limits back to 5Gb. Google and Amazon can afford to give away storage MS can’t.
Microsoft, you had them all.
The Photographers, Videographers and Musicians. The ones who wanted to be productive in a uncompromising way – who wanted to experience real freedom when they were going to create something. Not to worry about how much space is left on their OneDrive, when they load up, back up and share their projects via the cloud. Not to worry about any boundaries. Just to make one decision and then to have it right there, when they would need it.
How many people abused the system? I dont think they stack up against the users you will loose or even won’t aquire by this bad decision. OneDrive was supposed to stand for something. Even when I am the normal user, who dont neet that 1 TB – it was about the comfortable thought to never have to worry about it. You shattered my confidence today with this poor decision. Just right at the point, when I was feeling proud for this company again.
So some months ago, there was this guy who said: Cloud first, mobile first.
He also said he wanted to empower people to achieve more. What happened to him?
Microsoft, you are the worst company ever. I’m buy you Win 10 PRO. That’s your gift for me ?
Жлобы, OneDrive это одна из вещей, ради которых я купил Win 10 PRO.
how can we cancel the Office 365 one year contract without penalty after 6 months?
I still have not received extra +9TB yet. I register that.
yes. Microsoft never wrote about +9TB thing on contract.
soooooo clever as literally con man. – Literally. sigh –
but why Microsoft said that as news release?
Aren’t you considering an affordable subscription to up to 10TB? I’m asking as I’m shooting 4K home videos and those tend to be large and now you take away something I was relying on…
Always loved OneDrive, because it was just really convenient:
– it had integrated Office Online with great collab abilities
– integrated with Windows 8.1 and its place holders allowed to keep all files online and sync just the ones you needed on a Surface 2 with limited storage capacity
– unlimited storage
How it is today:
– Office Online can be found in Dropbox as well
– Windows 10 removed the cool place holder feature
– storage gets restricted
This whole move doesn’t make any sense in Microsofts “Mobile first, cloud first” strategy”.
Microsoft as a company just started to turn into something cool, new innovative (especially the recent hardware announcements) which Google and Apple have missed in the last year.
BUT instead of improving their services, they do the opposite: They remove all the advantages of their services for power users which often are loyal MS customers and which buy MS hardware (I own a WP and a Surface), just because of a few people who could’ve been blocked from Onedrive with 2 mouse clicks.
I will switch to Dropbx which most of my friends use. I always tryed to convert them to OneDrive, but now the last pro argument has been ruled out.
Thanks Microsoft!
This is a horrible idea. I’ve been using and recommending Onedrive for atleast a year now, but this will stop instantly. I believe you are convinced this will get more people to use Office 365 but this will probably have the direct opposite effect.
Bad move Microsoft. Bad move…
This makes me angry and sad.
Dear OneDrive team,
if the reason for this change is really “a small number of users” abusing the system, why does that guy who bought a Lumia phone and enjoys his few GBs of storage for photos have to suffer for it?
Why do loyal customers who spent years convincing their family and friends to use your great service have to look like idiots now, because “In some instances” users stored countless Terabytes of data for free?
I can’t really say anything that hasn’t been mentioned thousands of times in the comments before mine. I’m just sad now. Thanks.
With only 5 free gb of storage why would anyone use onedrive to start with? Other competitors have a better (faster) service with more space for free. Why would anyone on android use onedrive when google offers free unlimited storage if you agree to having your maximum resolution capped at 16mp?
Your only advantage on the free tier was the space. And after one puts all they’re photos on google why would they change?
God ****** Microsoft you make really hard to recommend your services :-\
PS. I’m an office 365 home subscriber. But I started with the free tier. Wich I would never do if the limits were 5 gb.
I wasn’t expecting this from Microsoft… at all. Punishing everyone for the wrong-doings of a few isn’t fair.
OMG……….Don’t know what to say……I’m using 35 of 40 GB FREE OneDrive storage.
Goodbye OneDrive.
This will push everyone with more than 5GB of files onto Google Drive, good plan Microsoft!
One of the biggest tech company in the World didn’t have the insight that it would be possible? Feeling myself as a complete fool.
Change in pursuit of productivity and collaboration, eh? How’s that working out for you so far, MSFT?
Please don’t insult our intelligence.
Reading all these irate comments is so refreshing, though. Too bad MSFT does not seem to learn.
Sometimes I feel that MSFT has unintentionally hired some agent provocateurs that meet on a daily basis to discuss: “How can we antagonise our user-base today and make MSFT look like **** in the process?”
GOOOODBYE!!!
This is beginning of Cloud for personal use- first give free then say we can’t .. and charge … at least 50% will pay for extra cost because they will escape from moving data …
Good Money.
Once all business will be on cloud, similar changes will be there … oh we can expect this much growth from you organization, so now you need to pay more or you have time move … where to move you don’t have choice or budget to move so finally you have to Pay.
This is called business 😀
why you offered unlimited – if you can’t keep your promises ???
after this seems iCloud is more planed way. they know there customer respect their feelings ..
No temporary commitment to get more customer
I will say there is very poor sizing planing by OneDrive team without market analysis.
What a great way to completely destroy a product and **** of millions of people. You guys are officially ********.
Самый глупый поступок Microsoft, который я помню. Поступок, который приведет не только к потере большинства пользователей OneDrive, но и к потере репутации Microsoft. Отныне Microsoft будет считаться компанией, которая ничего никому не способна гарантировать. Это полный провал.
I remember a similar move by Microsoft back in the days of Hotmail. Google was promoting 1 GB of free storage with Gmail, and Microsoft REDUCED the limit to 5 mb! so what happened then? the Gmail-switchers never returned to Hotmail/Outlook.com because it is not easy to switch cloud services. when somebody is gone, take it gone forever.
is this the same strategy now?
This news came totally out of the blue. It’s incredible in the worst possible way.
“OneDrive storage plans change in pursuit of productivity and collaboration” is the title but even though i went through the entire article twice, i struggle to find a real explanation to this sudden move.
You cite a few that literally took your claim of “unlimited storage” and actually stored a LOT of data (because obviously, you can’t “store unlimited data”) and because of that you slash the service to all other users, while trying to disguise that as an improvement in “Productivity and collaboration”. I’m sorry but I wish you could clarify this because I miss the logical consequence. If you can clearly identify those cases and feel like they’re using the service in a wrong or illegal way, then why don’t take actions against them? If this move is so clearly aimed at improving the “Productivity and collaboration” why offer a compensation for something that should be already a gain by itself ?
I’ve always been against the mindset that wants everything for free: “If it’s on the internet, I must NOT pay for it” and I understand that whole OneDrive infrastructure probably costs more money than what it generates. What I CAN’T understand is why lie at your users? Is it a matter of profit ? Just tell YOUR users! Sure someone will complain because that’s the reaction when you take away something that’s considered “a right” but at least it’s clear statement.
Now everyone is raging about this announcement, on websites, on social media, even on this very same blog it’s almost impossible to find a comment with a positive sentiment. There’s plenty of people writing “switching to another service” or “we lost the only differentiator”. While for many of them it’s just a way to express their anger in this moment and probably it will never turn into reality, you’re starting to loose a more important and almost invaluable asset: their loyalty. If you loose your credibility, if you tell the people something they can’t possibly understand or give value to, their passion begins to wither and once that process starts, it’s incredibly hard to get it back on your side.
This.
If it weren’t enough that they were doing all this, they way they decided to ‘come out to us’ just adds insult to injury.
A post titled in a way to imply that they’re going to outline some changes that will improve productivity and collaboration, but does nothing of the sort.
Bravo.
In my opinion the post would’ve been better titled ‘SORRY’.
Or just ‘LOL ** (because we can)’.
E’ chiaramente solo una mossa commerciale. Non si puniscono tutti per la colpa di pochi, Se di colpa si puo’ parlare. Se offri spazio infinito e’ chiaro che qualcuno se ne approfitera’. Se non vuoi, limiti lo spazio e il problema e’ risolto. Bruttissima mossa!
Uhm, well I guess I can’t vouch for OneDrive for my friends and relatives, seeing that now Google Drive and such now have leverage with more free space (and it doesn’t help that photos/music don’t count against this free space). I’m not sure why you’d move the 15GB down to 5GB, and give no incentive for using the camera roll…
All this for some select customers that put 75TB of stuff in their unlimited storage? This is the wrong way to go about it, because now you’re not even trying to compete against guys like Google Drive and DropBox when you clearly can…
This is just wrong Microsoft.. So wrong! This is how you kill a service / app.
I hope you react properly to all the commotion on social media about this change.
really nice… we will see what will really happen, but it might be a reason, why I will stop paying for Office 365 Home subscription – now I am really glad, I recently extended the subscription for only 1 year! (There was a sale for Office 365 Home in the local retailer and I was thinking for more years…)
When the 15GB came out, I move all my photo from BOX to OneDrive, and now you all just wanna cancel it…i think I have to switch back to BOX once again, there is also 15GB for free….if you cannot handle user to use more than 75TB, just don’t use the word “unlimited” at the beginning.
Let’s make a bet … will Microsoft really shrink space from 30GB (for windows phone users) to 5GB?:o) It would be really funny! I have 16GB of photos from my two lumia phones alone ….. so should I delete them? Move to other service? Stop using windows phone? At least I hope there will be the some update to WP8.1 to integrate dropbox, gdrive ….. the same way onedrive is integrated. Otherwise it would be (another) epic fail. I love the integration of phone and PC and I’m not going to pay for that! Not even a symbolic price for something I was lured to be free. It’s just nonsense and I don’t believe Microsoft can afford to do this ……
Another problem is, the onedrive servers are located in US only and in the rest of the world it is incredibly slow …. almost unusable, so I wouldn’t really miss onedrive at all, IF THERE IS THE SAME INTEGRATION OF OTHER TECHNOLOGY!!! But most of the WP application offering cloud synchronization using integrated onedrive!
So …. there are only two options for MS, to integrate dropbox, gdrive etc. in Windows, Windows Phone, Office etc. and just leave the cloud business or RECONSIDER – HARD! And also there is another possibility, just don’t use Windows Phone ….. it seems, in last few months the most productive department in Microsoft is the department introducing nonsenses and sabotages Microsoft:) For example, W10 is just unusable on the tablet …. it’s just 10 steps backward from W8.1 and I seriously consider moving back (I will give it the last chance with threshold 2 update). If WM10 will be the same fail (and it seems to be, according to the last insider builds I tested) and lack of ton of WP8.1 functionality, I will probably wait another year (if ever) to move to WM10 on my lumia 930 …. such “smart” Microsoft decisions will seriously damage “universaI applications” concept ….. I was going to buy L950 before Christmas, but now, I will wait at least until next year whether Microsoft will pull its head from its *** …..
P.S.: It really offends me personally, when you are feeding me with the nonsense about 75TB users …. so just get rid of these users!!! And you can increase space for regular users!!! It’s that simple.
wollt ihr unbedingt die kunden verärgern? Limit auf 1 TB ist ok, aber die Kürzung des freien Speichers ist nicht ok. Google, dropbox und co werden sich freuen
I am really disappointed by this decision of Microsoft. What irritates me most is that they cut the free storage for everybody. For all current users Microsoft must seem really unreliable as a service provider. I can’t imagine an action which makes a worse impression on customers.
Goodbye Microsoft/OneDrive!
Microsoft should be ashamed of actions like this, i am done with microsoft, what a fraude
The only one thing I can think now is: was everything planned from the beginning? It seems so.
Yyour offer was such attractive that many people (like me and some of my friends) switch from DropBox to OneDrive (ex Skydrive). Now that you’ve been successful in grabbing users from other services you simply say “Ok, folks, you’re in our hands now, so rules changes… don’t you agree? So go away, we are not not interested; Actually we know the effort you would have to invest in changing your cloud services, so we know the most part of you will bend to our will.” Let me say that the last time I felt this way was when Apple destroyed the iPhone 3G with the last OS update, forcing me to buy a new one. The result? I bought the new branded WP7.
The worst part of this is many of my friends will say “so now? Do you still trust Microsoft? I’ve always said you shouldn’t have given confidence to them and… I was right”
Thank you, Microsoft, to demonstrate my confidence in you has always been misplaced (can you imagine how much stupid I feel right now? As an Office 365 Home Premium Subscriber, as a Xbox Music subscriber, as a Windows Phone User since he very beginning (hoping in the future of the ecosystem), as a Microsoft Developer… I only feel stupid, now, and probably I am.
Why Microsoft kill all that we come to trust?
Now my trust on cloud on accounts on all microsoft services is ended.
I choose an recommande to others skydrive-onedrive and windows for placeholder file…end.
I trust lumia even I loose with windows phone 7…now again.
I love list reader…go.
I love music video apps but to many names and not for Romania.
I buy apps from store because pay once and have on phone and pc …but now my phone is ver 8 and desktop 10 so I pay twice….very bad.Also all the trash are promoted in store.
I put friends family to trust windows update now this things are every second and we dont know what are and this use more of ours space.
IN A SIMPLE WAY… I’LL NOT BE YOUR COBAI … A COMPANY THAT TEST MY DECISION FOR FUTURE PROFIT…
That means: Good Bye Onedrive and back to Google Drive and others.
Thanks for reducing free users to 5GB which is a very very small amount of storage in today’s world..
Very, very disappointing. Great way to use loyal cutomers
Goodbye Office365. Goodbye onedrive.
This is such a pathetic excuse.
And this comes after making the sync experience useless on that steaming … pile you call Windows 10.
Please just stop trying. Go with Joe Belfiore on a boat and stop messing with our lives. Just stop.
First it was the smart files on windows 10 thing. I’m still using windows 8.1 because of that. Now there’s this. I use 2 terabytes on my OneDrive account so this makes it useless for me.
I guess I’ll go back to pirate Office and get my cloud service somewhere else.
This is just stupid, you sold “unlimited” plans and now cry about it. I have news for you: Onedrive was and is a slow buggy piece of **** that had only two things going for it: Large cheap storage and Office 365 sidekick. Going back to 1 TB from “unlimited” is a HUGE insult. You easily could have limited it to e.g. 10 TB, which was given first, when customer asked for more space (to 1TB).
Cut to free storage plan is just unbelievable. You really want to kill this service?
It is clearly a business move.: Nadella said “Windows everywhere” and now removes GB from users. Mhh… Seems to be a good idea to push people to buy Windows phones and Surface. A very good idea.
This is very disappointing for those of us on the free 15GB. I hope Microsoft reconsiders the 15GB downgrade as this will affect a lot load of people who rely heavily on OneDrive to complement their low phone storage. I sincerely hope the OneDrive team in particular think seriously about shutting out MS mobile users who desperately need this 15GB storage space. For those abusing the “unlimited storage” , I think Microsoft should contact them to reduce their storage usage instead of melting out collective punishment to the OneDrive community at large.
Microsoft, please think again about this collective punishment!!!
This means my Onedrive limit goes from 30 to 5 Gb. Bye Onedrive.
And the lesson here is: don’t build a cloud sync service into your semi-free operating system, make it a defult destination for most documents, and then promise unlimited storage for subscribers and expect them not to use as much as they can. It’s unlimited. Unlimited just that. It does not mean “maybe unlimited”, or “a little bit unlimited”. It is unlimited.
Furthermore, it’s somewhat disconcerting that Microsoft were having a rummage around those larger OneDrive accounts and have been able to identify the file types that were being stored. While I appreciate Microsoft never promised an underlying encrypted filesystem in which Microsoft staff could not access or identify files and their filenames, this nevertheless raises some issues.
This sort of thing makes cloud services look extremely bad.
You would have known that no one would like this change, yet you’ve still done it.
Is your goal literally to lose customers? Are you trying to make even more people hate you?
Most people don’t care about you focusing on “productivity”, whatever that vaguely means, they just care about storage space and simple things like being able the share files.
Thanks MS. Having earned 40GB of free space for my photos over the years I really love the idea of losing most of that space. Why? Just started using google photos, thanks to you, and found out how much smoother and faster it is compared to onedrive. Couldn’t be happier:).
As a MSFT shareholder, I’m seriously shocked. Satya Nadella wants people to love Microsoft. With moves like this, you are disappointing existing users massively. It kills trust in your cloud. And it’s a easy way the get bad press worldwide. Just to save some cheap cloud space.
Please, stop this ASAP. This is massive!
I’ve dealt with the lack of integration compared to dropbox, the awkward interface, and just overall lack of refinement with OneDrive solely because the unlimited feature made it future proof. I wanted to prevent the exposure, risk of loss, and time involved with a potential transfer to another service in the future. Well, I’m nowhere near 1TB yet, but I can tell you I’m shopping other plans today and locking it in for as long of a time period as is allowed. Owe and goodbye Office suite, I’m going back to open source options.
M$, you should be offering stand out service and features to draw some users in now that you’re finally approaching the bar in some areas of mobile (W10, Surface). Service is as important a part of the ecosystem as hardware and software.
Farewell
Ich bin sehr enttäuscht über diese wenig nachvollziehbare Entscheidung. Sie wird einige Kunden zur Konkurrenz bewegen.
I´m very disappointed and can´t understand this decision. MS will lose costumers.
Well this is pretty disgusting. I’m definitely not saying anything new here as many have chimed in with how this affects them similarly. But I want to make sure the OneDrive team is inundated with a sense of how many customers they just alienated.
I started with this during the LiveMesh days, and I loved that it would sync up my files over my local network. Letting me keep my files backed up and accessible behind the scenes without eating up my online storage. A system that didn’t put me at a company’s mercy as far as having my files accessible to me, worst case scenario (which happened) was LiveMesh stops working and files no longer sync.
It was a relative pain to have to let that go once they deprecated Mesh for OneDrive (which was Skydrive). But I made the switch, being able to back up my Camera Roll (and the 15GB they provided for that use) was instrumental in my decision to stick with this service. And it made me wary, as it put my data at the mercy of another company, keeping that trust is a big thing.
Then in the years that followed we’ve had complaints about WP not having SD storage, and the dearth of devices with decent onboard storage. Again, OneDrive was frequently quoted as the panacea, a cloud first world where online always-available storage that was the answer, and THEN they come in and change their tune on that as well?
Offering the unlimited storage to 365 users was stupid. Unlimited anything is usually stupid as various ISPs have learned (or have they?). How long are companies going to be allowed to use hotwords such as ‘unlimited’ to bring in customers only to change their minds at a later date? Hoping that the inertia of changing providers and the sloughing off of less pocketed competitors to be what keeps customers.
Don’t offer unlimited if you can’t do unlimited. But this doesn’t affect me, but it’s not fair to say this doesn’t matter, I may feel 1Tb is enough, but I’m sure it matters for some, and they have a valid reason to be unhappy even if they’re not the bulk of users. I’m pretty sure their voices will be ignored, simply because they don’t number as many. But they have a valid complaint..
No, what’s really sad, and what seems to be affecting a whole lot more people, is how they shoehorn that as justification for slashing the 15Gb+15Gb for free users (with Camera Roll back up).
How is that related? Own up to your stupid policies.
Even if they were to retract this, there’s irreparable damage in how I view OneDrive as a viable place to store my memories. As a die-hard MS supporter I can’t adequately express how this policy change shakes my faith in trusting this company to be in charge of handling my digital life, and by extension whether I will continue to buy into owning their devices that hook into their services.
It’s so shocking that they felt this was okay in a market that has so much competition, it just shook me to the core to realize there really is no ‘new Microsoft’, of course companies operate for their own benefit, but to know the welfare of their customers don’t guide their policies anymore than they did in the days of 2Mb hotmail storage makes me unbelievably sad.
A real kick to the gut. Wow.
I agree fully, this plus the forced win10 upgrade shows clearly there is NO new microsoft no matter what they’re trying to show. It did not last long, 1 or 2 years maybe? 😀
I agree fully.
I wholeheartedly agree with every word you said.
I’ve been a devout WP user from before it was WP and was WM. Taking away the 15 GB + 15 GB and leaving it at 5 GB has shaken my loyalty considerably. Even if they backtrack like they did with XBox One not being able to play used games and no backward compatibility, the fact they don’t care about loyalty by not at least grandfathering the current users in to the 15 GB + 15 GB plan is such a blow that I’m no longer dead set on the Lumia 950 XL as my next phone. I will have to start researching Android phones or even look at iPhone (never thought I’d think that, let alone write those words).
Congratulations MS & the OneDrive team. You’ve disappointed me for the last time. I will always take your offerings with a grain of salt and be forever disillusioned with your company.
Это просто ужас, сперва дают, потом отнимают…подобного отношения к клиентам я никогда не ожидал! Ищу новый сервис облачного хранилища, чтоб не кидал!
I’ll try to demonstrate how Microsoft support the piracy for his supremacy.
In this days are very easy to secure the products for people that not pay but Microsoft always leave that door open for numbers because they know are few people that support financial this ecosystem.
So if Microsoft want that I continue as a subscriber a user that pay your services must close all that users that not pay use crack and post comments with their dreams.
Can do this Microsoft let we see?
I’ll try to demonstrate how Microsoft support the piracy for his supremacy.
In this days are very easy to secure the products for people that not pay but Microsoft always leave that door open for numbers because they know are few people that support financial this ecosystem.
So if Microsoft want that I continue as a subscriber a user that pay your services must close all that users that not pay use crack and post comments with their dreams.
Can do this Microsoft let we see?
This was the final straw for me.
I am a Microsoft user for a long time, support the good products MS has been creating… Xbox, skydrive, Windows phone, office, Windows, surface… But I have been disappointed by the stupidity and ******** you have been showing. Please reflect and think!
Disgusting Microsoft – not to mention commercially completely stupid. I currently have a lot of extra storage which I was expecting to expire anyway, but I pay for the 50GB plan and would soon need to upgrade to the 100GB. Now you’re saying:
a) You’re taking away some of the storage I already have – my ‘free’ storage.
b) you’re increasing the cost of my 50GB plan
c) when I grow out of 50GB, there is no further option for me?
Great work. I was comparing OD to upgrading my Google account – I use Google and OD for different purposes at the moment – but you’ve just made my mind up for me. Well done.
Wow, just wow. So very disapointed here.
Been a MS fan and Onedrive / Skydrive / Mesh user from the early days and have put up with connection issues, **** sync clients, changes in strategy and all the rest because it seemed that the goals for Onedrive were in the right place.
To create a cloud storage / collaboration platform that would fit into my digital life and world. This latest change really feel like it c$%£ all over that.
How is such a drastic pruning of storage like this a benefit for collaboration? Are you really saying that you want OneDrive to only be a place for keeping office documents and nothing else?
Please have a long hard look at what your competitors are doing. If online storage isn’t a space you want to be in, please come clean and just pull the plug so we can move on with our lives instead of just dragging us along.
Used OneDrive as Backup for my private Family photos and raw files…
Please do it like amazon photos and let paying customers use OneDrive unlimited for photos and raw files.
This is stupid. Just stupid.
I used OneDrive for automatic Backup of my Lumia Photos.
This must be huge mistake by Microsoft, if this will turn to reality!
I mean should I use another service (google photos (unlimited with resized images), amazon photos (unlimited with Prime subscription)) instead for free backup of the photos?
Whats wrong with you Microsoft?
I suppose Microsoft is aware that Google’s free plan contains 15GB? Basically 3 times the space Microsoft will be offering.
Also, 50GB $2 is twice the price Google is actually charging ($2 for 100GB).
I suppose Microsoft wants consumers to either to pay for their Office365 plan or just get off. Because this is what’s going to happen.
Haha we don’t need to wait long until ALL major online sync services will go back to 2GB free plans. The only reason for them to push limits out was OneDrive. Now that the big brother becomes a small brother, they can also bak up and cut their plans.
Great news!!! First they killed the ‘online-only’ mode, so I can’t use the onedrive like before with my win10 tablet, then they go from 20GB (15+5) to 5GB, well, seems to me to go to gmail (still I will be able to check my outlook emails) use the 15GB google drive , after all seems a good idea as gdrive can sync with Linux (esp Ubuntu) . BYE BYE M$ and good luck
Another terrible customer unfriendly decision.
Back to Apple and Google people.
Ugh, I just migrated all my pictures, music and documents. Grmblr
For people in need of an alternative solution:
Google Photos = unlimited storage
Google Music = 50 000 tracks to store for free
Google Docs = free to store
Google Drive = 15GB free
Google Books = free storage of my e-book collection
Google Chrome = bookmark sync and free extensions like AdBlock
=> you have to buy an Android or Apple phone though since those services are not available on Windows Phone.
Prabhu
Boo, Microsoft! Someone who approved this decision should be fired.
Ok,
i was disappointed by a lot of descision, i think it’s the last i accept from you.
I will change all for a google
i get a win7 whhich never get w8
i get a surface which were abandonned
i get a office account for onedrive…. and now they change everything…
It took me a fair amount of time to convince several family members that OneDrive was the best choice based on the 15gb free + 15gb camera roll bonus. Now i get to look like a fool as they (I) have to scramble to move their data to another service that offer enough storage for all of their personal photos and documents.
To title this obvious money saving move as “OneDrive storage plans change in pursuit of productivity and collaboration” is insulting. What part of this encourages productivity or more collaboration?
If this was truly about a few abusers the correct move would be to cap storage, not reduce it for all. It’s obvious now that when you said unlimited you lied.
well bye mc
never going to buy mc phone again .
Very disappointing. Decisions like this undermine the trust needed to have a healthy relationship with a service provider. Deal with the exceptions, don’t punish the general user base. This feels like greed. not
In the first place, it is unfair to punish ALL your users because of the mischiefs of very few ones.
Then, you should add some 10-15 Gb for Camera Roll: I’ve been using Windows Phone for 2 years and it’s not always nice, so it doesn’t seem wise to let us down as if we were like those guys using iOS or Android. Well, maybe that’s the way you want it.
And, finally: please give us the option to keep placeholders on Windows 10. That’s the only reason why I won’t upgrade my Windows 8.1 tablet.
Very disappointing. Decisions like this undermine the trust needed to have a healthy relationship with a service provider. Deal with the exceptions, don’t punish the general user base. This feels like greed.
Microsoft I’m sure you understood these changes would be unpopular, but instead of just removing ‘unlimited’ options and saying – “we messed up, unlimited is more popular than we thought and you’ll now have to pay for extra storage”. You’re instead saying that it’s no longer going to be POSSIBLE to store any large files on your system – by limiting it to 1TB you’re completely ruining your system. I enjoy taking photos and video and I currently have about 5TB of data stored on your system. I’ve spent a LONG time collating and de-duping my photos from various back-ups onto one single online location and now you’re telling me I can’t even pay extra to store that data on your system? Where’s the 5TB storage option? or 10 or 20TB?
All I’m left with is 100gb and 200gb options, which, frankly, is pathetic. You’re one of the largest tech companies in the world… get your S*** together and make sure I don’t have 4/5ths of my data deleted in a year.
This is the best way to drive people away from the service, even if the Office and Windows teams force you to save files here.
I think you should reconsider and pull an Xbox One on this one.
For now, mega.co.nz is the best alternative.
Blaaaah that’s what you are. Going back to Dropbox and Google Drive/Calendar.
Squeeze more less you get.
Пиздец.
We use Windows Phone because Onedrive, without Onedrive why we use Windows Phone?
Cloud first, mobile first, powered by Google!
Wow, typical Microsoft. Promise the world and then deliver an island.
So I cancelled my Dropbox and Google Drive accounts because MS told me that I was getting unlimited storage. ****, I even had a post on the MS community where I as assured that I would be getting unlimited storage
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/forum/odstorage-odsubs/onedrive-space-with-office-365-subsription/d43c8df9-e655-462c-8746-a56f7555400f
Now this news comes out. So either I was being lied to all of this time because this decision didn’t happen overnight or MS Community moderators don’t have a flipping clue what’s going on with the company that they are answering for.
Tell me again why I should place any trust or faith in Microsoft.
Another flabbergasted customer here. This puts you behind practically every competitor and destroys any trust in your offering. Why would anyone subscribe when they could suddenly find what they are paying for reduced?
I have been using your cloud offering since the early mesh days and seen your offering get worse and worse
25GB > 15GB > 5GB. What a sorry excuse for a cloud storage service.
So you might as well remove the Groove Music syncing features with OneDrive as you’ve pretty much killed this feature/service now. I currently have 263gb but only use 8gb which is mostly just photos – that sync with all my PC’s and Windows Phone – another feature killed which let’s Windows Phone users down massively. Utterly pointless and unfair, and I will be going back to DropBox ASAP!
Thanks Microsoft!
Just to add my name to the list of aggrieved users. I don’t use 1Tb yet, but am getting close enough for this to require me to rethink how I use OneDrive.
If the “unlimited usage” is being abused by a few people with 75Tb video collections, why not change the usage terms to outlaw that, and deal with people who break the rules, not penalise the rest of us? Why not set the limit somewhere more realistic, e.g. 5 or 10 Tb?
This storage option was THE reason I bought an Office 365 subscription. I am not using a terabyte, but I never will because I won’t be renewing. Google Drive and iCloud is cheaper. Google sheets and docs are easy replacements for home use. A company should always under-promise and over deliver. The onedrive team did exactly th opposite.
I am an Office 365 subscriber and although I use less than 1 tb of storage I am upset by this move. It seems all the storage solutions such as DropBox and Google Drive are giving their users more storage while Microsoft is giving less. This actually makes me question that the underlying Azure Storage does not have the price or performance scalability for Microsoft to continue providing storage efficiently. For our company’s cloud solution I was considering recommending Azure but I definitely won’t be now. OneDrive is the halo product for Azure storage. If the storage costs are not competitive enough for an internal customer, how are they going to be competitive going forward for external customers.
thats epic fail MS and time to say goood bye Onedrive and say hello Mega or Dropbox
you lured me with space for my music and my photos and now u cut it off. so i guess you want me to switch to google? then i think i can change my windows phone for an android too?
just in time I was thinking to upgrade the current android to Lumia, guess that? Thank you microsoft! NO F* WAY TO BUY A M$ PRODUCT
I don’t agree with these changes. I think the 1 TB limit is a generous amount for O365 users, don’t get me wrong, but I do have a problem with the 5 GB limit that the free accounts will have. With MSFT offering the use of OneDrive as a default save location for photos, videos, documents, and as a music locker for Microsoft Groove, you would think that they would at least keep the 15 GB limit, if not offer 25 GBs like they did when OneDrive was Skydrive.
I don’t plan on switching cloud storage providers, as OneDrive has done a great job for my use, I just wish that they would re-evaluate their decision. If I do have to share anything that is of decent size, I will probably default to BitTorrent Sync, which does a great job of syncing files between computers over the Internet without the limitations of a cloud storage provider.
Yep another disgruntled user here, I’m well over 1tb but still considerably under the initial 10tb I was given of my “unlimited” storage. I’ve not been a loyal user since day 1 of the beta, I have been a user who moved from a rival service since day one of the unlimited storage upgrade being officially sold as a feature after a long marketing campaign lauding it’s addition.
People need to stop justifying this even partially by calling people abusers of the service. Microsoft offered a service which people bought and used as described. Given that one of the reasons placeholders were removed was due to the size they take up when people store huge amounts of data on your unlimited service you didn’t seem to concerned about it then. I could probably learn to live with 1tb, may have too depending where I end up, but I feel used as I have also recommended the service to several people and sold more than a few office subscriptions on your behalf. I am now responsible for them being lied to!
I’ll be cancelling for a refund as soon as my data is all backed up elsewhere and this is definitely going to impact future purchasing decisions, if adobe would support linux it would be an attractive option at this point. In the meantime I’ll stick windows 8.1 and add dropbox or hubic whilst I pick out my now ps4 package.
Who will save my 3.5GB of music in the Groove Music folder and another I-don’t-know-how-muchGB photos from my Windows Phone??? I didn’t like the new plans, especially the free one, I don’t have money to pay for online storage and need it for my Windows Phone… Actually I use 16/30GB, becaouse I have 2 Lumias and a PC with Windows 10 where I save ALL my Files…
I’m highly disappointed. There are so many examples of how to handle a situation like this, but what you are proposing, is not one of them. Fix the issues and don’t punish those that use it for legitimate purposes based on what you offered. This breach of your trust is going to drive me straight it another storage provider and has soured Microsofts brand – just as you guys were becoming cool again.
This is bait and switch. I have about 2TB of photo and video files from personal professional production work and was happy to use OneDrive. This is such an awesome decision and I am positively sure it will put a bad mark on the company. Hope MS will reconsider the decision.
Unlimited storage was one of the main features I liked about office 365, even though I haven’t used a TB yet. The free use amount is incredibly small now.
What is the point to downgrade the storage of those already using OneDrive for more than a year … At this rate all you will achieve is just push away those people liking using your products to competition because to be honest it is not that difficult to switch ….
This is a pretty good announcement if you are Google, Amazon or Dropbox. Punish the majority for accounts that are abusing the system.
When the ‘unlimited’ plan was announced I drew a breath because without a fair usage policy and reasonable enforcement you become a troll magnet. Most users wanted a sensible cloud storage for a reasonable amount of ‘stuff’. Mostly personal photos, videos, documents and maybe music. My own personal use is somewhere between 14gb and 20gb.
My WIndowsphone netted me some camera roll space, my early adopter status got me a bit more.
So my Windowsphone loyalty is being punished.
Now OneDrive sync isn’t the smartest in the world. Dropbox easily beats it. The big news was that OneDrive had space albeit you waited a long time for the sync – particularly if you buy a new PC.
Free stuff is expensive to offer. That’s why ‘unlimited’ plans for anything are dangerous to offer because they raise expectations. However the OneDrive changes are not directed at ‘high users’ but across the board, many of whom use other Microsoft services, so this is pretty much a marketing disaster.
Steadily driving OneDrive (and many of your other services) into the ground…
Poor show Microsoft, this is gonna make me seriously reconsider getting another Windows Phone now I can’t even backup all my photos.
This plus getting rid of placeholders has turned One Drive from my favorite cloud file solution to something bland and indistinguishable from any of the other offerings.
This is a shame, I’ve always supported Microsoft, but this move have disappointed me.
I’ll have to drop OneDrive and move on to Google Drive.
I can set you up with a google drive under my business account for the current unlimted rate (£6.60 or $10).
You can get in touch via andparsons@live.co.uk if you’re interested.
Translation: “We don’t know how to sync more than 5GB and we need to cut budget. So we blame a few users and stop giving service to all the others.”
5GB is not remotely enough to sync WP. This is bull****.
Wow… 420+ comments up until now and more than 400 disapproving comments… That’s a good job of ******* off both paid (revenue generating) and free ( your base) customers.
A little honesty over the actual reason behind the decision would have at least left most people disappointed instead of making them angry.
Back to Google Drive!
(When they start offering PayPal as a payment method)
I can set you up with a google drive under my business account for the current unlimted rate (£6.60 or $10).
You can get in touch via andparsons@live.co.uk if you’re interested.
I’m owner of a company creating a software product. We thought about using azure in future. But now, how can we possibly trust in Microsoft cloud products, if you betray your loyal customers like this? We really thought Microsoft has changed to a friendly, lovely company. But now you show you old ugly and greedy face again. How can you. Do you have any ideas how big such stupid descitions can be? Microsoft can not affort to lose customers.
I get unlimited storage through google for my business.
I’m happy to setup an account for anyone who would want it, at whatever the current unlimited rate is (£6.60 or $10)
You can get in touch via andparsons@live.co.uk if you’re interested.
Pretty sure that’s illegal. You should read you’re terms of service
I was an early adopter during SkyDrive, at one point i had 55 GB for free and was told it was forever as a thanks to my loyalty. I am tired of these takebacks your team has done to us loyal users. Microsoft is better than this and you need to fix this problem on your side not punish the users. Get yourself straight OneDrive “team”.
No 100 GB Option any more, but I can get 50 GB for the same price? I can see that you are annoyed with customers storing up to 75 TB of data and understand that you limit them to 1 TB, but that is no excuse to reduce the service for anyone else. And if that is the way you treat your customers, then I should look for some other cloud provider to store my data.
I enjoy watching the downfall of the mighty Microsoft.
You are crazy! this is the most crazy thing that i read about your services ! Now where is the bonus for purchase a lumia? with only 5gb i cannot upload many photos, videos and documents. I want at least 15gb bouns for for lumia phone! otherwise i will sell it and will purchase an android!
Now is better to purchase an android so i can upload more photos and documents and i can works with your apps for andorid. Unbelievable!!
So much for the all inclusive multi platform experience Microsoft wants to offer. At one point, I could take a picture with my phone, pull it up on my computer to re-touch it a bit, then put that slideshow on my TV during a kids birthday to show picture of him. and all that work was super easy and fast. Now I have to pay extra for it. I get that “pay to play” is a good business model, but if everyone is doing it, no one will use the services anymore.
I, for one, dont need 200 different monthly bills to use office, photoshop, onedrive, xbox live, my internet, electric, water, gas, car, house, daycare, phone, phone’s data plan, insurances, warranties, micro transactions being added to any games you wanna play, songs you wanna hear, video’s you wanna watch, Hulu, Netflix, and any other host of services that are trying to get the last remaining dollars in my pocket. I dont think these should all be free services, I’m not that dumb, but its death by 1,000 cuts. And now YouTube, founded on “Broadcast yourself” is becoming “Broadcast yourself so long as you pay for YouTube Red” (great marketing, please Bing “You Tube Red” and see what your results are. Google own YouTube, and all “Red Tube” results have already been removed from the top 2 or 3 pages)
the result is going to be that no one uses it because its an overload, and one drive storage isnt a priority over daycare, or a mortgage.
I feel cheated and can no longer trust you as a reliable long-term provider of cloud storage solutions. Moreover, you just ruined all your recent efforts to rebuild Microsoft’s image.
Really disappointed. Spent a lot of time convincing friends and family to use OneDrive instead of competing services due to the fact that it offered more free storage and awesome photo layouts/sharing tools. To add insult to injury you’ve priced the 50 GB plan higher than Apple’s iCloud! Looks like I’ll be dropping OneDrive in 2016. This has totally made me rethink trading my MacBook Air in for a Surface Book. Oh well it was fun while it lasted.
OMG, you have no idea… I did the same thing and have gotten tons of people hooked on one drive. With the win8.1 smart files, sharing, etc… there was almost nothing I wouldn’t do with it. Plus, I do all my condo association business for documents through it. I will reluctantly have to go with some hybrid model of google drive.
I wonder if it’s too late to cancel my Surface Pro 4 i7 preorder…
I was about to spend $2700 on a surface book. not now.
don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
VERY disappointed. Looks like for education space will have to look to Google http://googleforeducation.blogspot.com/2014/09/announcing-drive-for-education-21st.html
Glad I waited to spend $2700 on a surface book since I won’t be now. I also will not be renewing my Office 365 subscription. Much like the OneDrive app from win7 being used in win10, this is a backwards step. It’s 2015, storage is cheap but customer loyalty and investment into an echo system is not. I have to completely revamp all of my workflows now. I hope that you guys flip flop back on this.
Bad move Microsoft
多麼傻逼的行為啊！
What a glorious update. 30 to 5 for the free options and 100 to 50 for the same price.
Somehow this announcement fails to excite me.
Does it mean that we have to get paid OneDrive subscriptions with the new 950 Lumias just for the sake of making photos/vids?
“•Free OneDrive storage will decrease from 15 GB to 5 GB for all users, current and new. The 15 GB camera roll storage bonus will also be discontinued.”
Just reread this. I thoought you were only limiting future users to 5 Gb. But now I understand current users will also be downgraded. It makes no sense. I’ve been recommending and helping people to use onedrive even of they’re on android (like my self).
Now I have to move them all to Google Photos.
Good luck getting those users again. 😡
Going from 30 GB to 5 GB is huge step backwards. At least give Windows Phone or Surface customers a bonus.
hard to read this blog. grey on white is not good for reading. remember some of us have poor eyesight!
So, you have decided to kill this service, haven’t you? There is no other explain to this decision.
Ok, most people probably use less than 5GB, so there is no problem… but what are you doing is a dangerous precedent: how anyone can use a service of your if you can change it so much? 30 GB vs 5 GB, for everyone, even early subscribers…
Any are abusing of OneDrive? Close their accounts, set different limits to what you can upload, but to shrink the space to 1/6… bad, too bad.
What’s next, people could only sync on equal days, calendar on odd? Outlook will not accept attachment with pink icons?
I am very disappointed: the >1TB was the key argument for me to get an office 365 subscription.
I hope the board directors and senior leaders in MS are taking note of this. There is not a single positive comment. You need to do a damage control ASAP. This news is not good for Microsoft at all.
Worst move ever. at least making the same amount of free storage as google do. otherwise it’s self killing.
Most disappointing news from MS ever.
Windows (Desktop & Mobile) success depends on these free gigs. do you really realize it ?
Loyal user since FolderShare. I have recommended OneDrive, Windows Phone, Surface and even Office 365 to multiple users. Mostly because the ability to keep things in sync, even when people take photos with their phones (WP) or tablets (Surface).
Now I’ll look like an idiot. And you give the same tratment to the guy using a $10 chinese Android running Chrome or to me using a Surface, WP and several other products and subscription. I’m *@_#(*@#_%)#@% ****** and feel betrayed. Also, I can’t stop thinking that I’m feeling unsure about Azure, since you may change the rules any time.
What year are we living that the world’s biggest IT company can offer only 5 gb to run it’s c l o u d based ecosystem?
Understandable if you want more customers to subscribe for the paid storage plan, but at least reconsider the pricing. Now you cut the current 100gb plan by 50% while keeping the price the same.
“50 gb for 1$ a month!” didn’t sound good to your product team? it sure **** would have generated more customers than this approach.
I’ll add to the “this is bull****” column”:
You justify this by pointing to a small number of bad actors who were abusing the unlimited storage pilot, but then you add that you’re also cutting the free storage tier and getting rid of the 100GB and 200GB paid options. Straining our patience even further, the new 50GB tier costs $1.99/mo, which buys 100GB today.
Personally, the fact that unlimited storage isn’t happening isn’t a huge blow; I only using a small part of the 1TB allocation I have. But other people were depending on that commitment, and there were better ways to handle it. Frankly, you’ve stated the ambition to have a billion Windows 10 users, and I don’t honestly believe that no one at Microsoft could have imagined that there would be a population of users that would take you at your word. But if unlimited storage wasn’t practical, you could have offered alternatives that don’t punish the majority of your users. You could have offered paid tiers above 1TB, for example.
Given the other changes announced, it’s clear that there were other motivations beyond the need to reign in a few extreme users. People are smart enough to read between the lines and see that, and what’s angering them is the lack of forthrightness in communicating these changes along with the lack of integrity that comes pulling the rug out from under those dependent on the existing free and paid tiers.
Hang your head in shame, Microsoft. This is pathetic.
Horrible decision to punish everyone. Limiting the max usage is understandable, 1TB isn’t, and all the other decisions aren’t either.
5 GB free storage+15 GB camera roll storage bonus will also be discontinued = making Google drive superior.
This is just making people hate OneDrive and MS, while the goal of MS is the opposite.
I can see that this is likely marketing to get people to buy Office360; but this will only result in losses.
I was planning on getting Office360 along with a Lumia950, now I’m doubting it, this doesn’t inspire trust in MS…
I still believe in OneDrive, I hope you undo this horrible decision.
Now I have to worry about backing up data from Onedrive to some other place…. Seriously this move is VERY damaging for Microsoft.
How can anyone trust you anymore ?
I don’t think I’ve rolled my eyes as hard as after seeing your byline – “in pursuit of increased productivity and collaboration”. Yeah, right. How about, in pursuit of more money at any cost and at the risk of alienating my entire user base.
Seriously MS, I am trying to like the new you. I want to like the new you. I even just bought the Surface Pro 4. But every time I warm up to you, you go out of your way to remind me just how ****** you are as a company and how completely out of touch you are with reality. It’s no wonder you’ve been losing out to all your competitors.
I mean, who in their right minds is going to feel compelled to make a transition to One Drive, which has always been late to the cloud storage game, for a whopping 5GB of space? All your competitors provide much more, and they are already beating you at this! So your solution to compete is to completely strip your solution of any semblance of parity with the other free services out there? Got it, could not expect any different from the MS the entire world has gotten to know and gotten tired of.
Idiot decision, just it
So it is one thing to change your offerings but another thing to apply it to everyone just so they can save on space. Thanks for nothing Microsoft and I thought you were learning I guess all of us were wrong about that.
I went from pirating Office to paying for Office 365.
I went from pirating Office for my family to getting them to pay for Office 365
I went from pirating Office for my friends to recommending they pay for Office 365.
The key persuaders in this argument to myself, family and friends was that:
a) You always have the latest version of Office
and b) You can have an unlimited cloud backup of your PC.
All in all I think I got Microsoft around 5-10 new Office 365 subscriptions. I use about 3.5TB of OneDrive storage to hold all my Photos, Videos and Games (all legally purchased through Steam I might add).
This completely screws me over. I spent months uploading all of these files, it took so long and now it’s all for nothing.
I will not be renewing my Office 365 subscription, I will not be renewing my parents and I will resume pirating Office for anyone that asks.
You’ve really, really… really screwed this up, I hope to god that you receive an avalanche of criticism, complaints, and feedback that forces you to reverse this shortsighted and terrible terrible decision.
Goodbye Microsoft.
I’m with you…your scenario almost mimics mine to a T. Not a giant heavy user, but sure I backed up my movies and games (all legal….DVD/BR to Digital) as you’re supposed to have 3 copies (1 local, 1 offsite, 1 cloud). I jumped on the 5 account process for my wife, myself, and immediate family…..such a shame that i’ll have to move them off now too. It’s a bummer.
I subscribed to Office 365 because of the unlimited storage. I keep 3,3 Tb of photos there now and planed to add more. I’ve spent a lot of time uploading them. Now I’m forced to stop paying for the subscription.
What a bad move, Microsoft.
Who will trust you after that?
Goodbye!
Here’s my deal. I use OneDrive Unlimited to BACKUP and offer my RAW photos across multiple machines and devices. I killed a different service offering unlimited backup to migrate everything to OneDrive because I am a Windows user. Windows 10 on Surface Pro 3, a Dell XPS desktop, and 2 Windows Phones (yes, there are people using those… stop laughing).
I also took advantage of Groove’s offer to store my MP3s (I converted them from lossless just to store on OneDrive) so I could listen anywhere, from any device. That’s about 180 GB of my limit now, for legitimately purchased and converted from CD MP3s. Now I am rethinking THAT strategy as well.
Before someone asks, I am using just under 1 TB. A few more photo sessions and I’ll be over the 1 TB limit with my RAW photos.
I think removing unlimited is one thing, not giving me an option to purchase an extra 1 TB block say, will really push me back to using other services.
This is also a fun stance when competitors like Google offer 15 GB for free. And Amazon has a $60 a year unlimited service. Maybe I’ll migrate to that, as that will definitely meet my needs. That is, of course, until THEY pull the rug out from under me as well.
It’s just nice to use the built in functionality of the OS with OneDrive sync, without having to add another agent to my machine to ensure my stuff is properly backed up.
I liked OneDrive for it’s Windows integration and free storage options if I synced my photos from Android. Thanks to this decision, I will be moving all my files back to Google Drive, and probably paying Google for more space. Clearly Microsoft cannot be trusted to deliver on their promises. What a terrible idea.
University freshman team could have done better competitor analysis for the future of OneDrive than your people
1) 50 GB for 2$ / month (Microsoft) vs 100 gb for 2$ (Google). That would make a nice PowerPoint slide right? (Oh sorry you don’t have any space left, so better use Google Drive instead)
2) Percentage number of these 75 tb abusers is running at a 0.001% level, how about friendly reminder to stop hosting a pirate island and leave the +99% users using less than 50gb alone?
3) For a company who promotes “Do great things” you are awfully bad at offering that platform storage wise. In a year where the tip of your little finger can store 1 tb of data, 5gb seems like a good deal to switch from Dropbox/iCloud/Google Drive to Microsoft lair?
Sounds like a class action lawsuit is on its way.
I was referring my friends and family for OneDrive since last year! But not anymore…
Good bye OneDrive! I’ll be start using Dropbox and Google Drive again.
I’ve two Lumia, where I’ll save my photos, videos and documents?
Please, MS tell me. WHERE?????
This is terrible. How can I keep convincing people to embrace windows 10 platform when the cloud is part of it? Now it is getting reduced to a tiny sliver? How are we going to keep bringing platform changers into the new 10 if things like this happen?
Disgusted.
Please make sure the OneDrive team is up and around at the MVP Summit. I’m sure many of us have some feedback on this.
bait and switch. just like windows phones.
as an IT professional, I’ve expounding on the benefits of Office365 and the Windows Phone interface in the office and personally. now i found myself looking the fool, professionally and personally.
Such a bad news!
Since you cancel the Live domain service unpredictably. It impact the my trust deeply.
This event make you lost my trust completely!
If I paid for service still not a stable solution!
What can I beleve in Microsoft!!!?
Trust – it’s a hard thing to earn. Your word is all we have to go by – and now – backing off a commitment when it’s convenient for you makes it hard for us to rely on any of your services going forward. I was considering a new Surface tablet but now, that’s in question as I don’t know how long you will support it – regardless of what type of commitment you’ve made.
Very disappointed recent champion of Microsoft.
Bad move for Microsoft. It’s ok to limit users from using so much space (75ΤΒ), it’s ok to make free space smaller, but it’s unacceptable to sell storage space in such high prices (only 50GB for 2$??). Office 365 is good, but not everyone wants this. At least, leave the old free space limit as it is.
With such decisions, trust goes away and the mobile market share of Windows Phones will never catch up with those of Iphones or Android Phones.
This is really not acceptable. At the moment I have only backed up my photos and some documents to my OneDrive, which takes about 40GB, using the free storage, including some bonuses. But I have about 3TB in other files stored locally that I simply didn’t back up because of my slow upload speed.
If you want to push Windows as a service and make OneDrive part of that service, it should have at least the storage you are now offering.
Diminishing that storage is like selling a car that will break down after 1 year and not offering warranty.
Wow guys. Just wow. You’re really pushing a lot of LOYAL windows supports away. It’s not only taking back a promise but you’re seriously cutting existing services that have been there. This along with all of my Surface Book issues. Way to go.
But, who works in MS marketing? Before lunching the sale of Lumia 950, Lumia 550, Surface 4 and Surface Book you going crazy and reduce the OneDrive space???? You are in time to go back. Please don’t do it otherwise you loose a lot of consumer.
Excellent point. Aside from the customer relations fiasco this is – why would MS – OneDrive want to shrink OneDrive at the same time they are rolling out all these products that work exceedingly well with OneDrive? Really a bad move on several levels. Cost benefit ultimately won’t work out in MS-OneDrive’s favor on this move.
This move is way over reacted.
I absolutely agree about excessive storage. But going from unlimited to almost zero ist just the wrong move.
I got over a TB with my subscriptions and backup a “lot”, yet I am actually just using 20GB.
Yes, put in a limit, but do it gradually and don’t hurt the average joe.
The new limit is just like Apple.
Disappointed in this. Microsoft, you’re trying to be the leader in cloud services, but this is a HUGE setback. Don’t punish everyone just because a few people abuse the storage offer. And I thought Microsoft would turn a new leaf by listening to its customers since Satya took over. Guess not…
Stupid move. What a shame.
I am so disappointed by this announcement. I have 3.5 TB of data. I’d have understood if Microsoft fixed a limit of 10 TB but 1 TB is too little (Just for example one hour of filming in 4K = 30 GB of space.). At the beginning, I’d pay for a 10TB storage, but if Microsoft fix a 1TB limit, I will not pay for this service.
This was a terrible decision. Some should be fired for this, and it should be reversed immediately.
Has anyone stopped to ask themselves how Microsoft knows what people were storing in their OneDrive in the first place? I thought they didn’t look at peoples stuff.
Just because they can see how much data you’re using, it doesn’t mean they know what’s in it. Besides, they do have an algorithm that picks up certain thinks like child pornography, and can shut your account down for that. Every company employs a similar algorithm.
This is literally the saddest news I have heard all day!
Please don’t do this! I love OneDrive and I recently just got my extended family to start using it to share photos.
Please don’t take away our storage, so we can keep using OneDrive!
Boooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!
That’s like prison rules. One person does something bad and everyone gets restricted for it. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t point the finger in this case. Or restrict limits on size of files. Or take the opportunity to educate on proper backup strategy. You don’t even have to analyze the content of the files for that.
On all files > 2MB if it’s an Office document, suggest compressing pictures and removing embedded media.
Any other file > 1MB suggest local backups are more accessible for large file sizes.
As a bonus, offer p2p backups as an alternative. Say, if you have a trusted friend at another physical location, offer to set up a 2-way backup solution where each user allocates an equal storage space for encrypted storage on their device for the other person. Or pooled storage for multiple redundancy amongst >2 people. Seems like a smart compromise for everyone.
I’m seriously pretty annoyed by this. Mainly the changes to the lower end limits particularly the move to just 5 GB. I think this is pretty much the last time I recommend an MS service to any one. I’m not an MSFT fanboi (quite the reverse in fact remembering the nineties) but I had recommended the MS cloud services to a number of people and often recommended signing up for One(Sky) Drive if they were having problems on iOS or moving data from elsewhere especially because of it’s generous initial limit (especially if took up the photo storage – which I recommended) and platform agnosticism. Why do they not have more tiered price points and what they do have is no bad value compared to Google and Apple – farcical.
The funny thing is that I’m just in the middle of transitioning my home solutions to Office 365 now that my Mother has had to go into a care home for an initial six months – just much easier for us all to share info and no need to worry about physical back ups as a central home base could become disrupted in the changes. So really it’s probably not going to impact me as there’s no way I’ll be troubling the 1TB limit as I probably will only store business related stuff and copies(only) of photos and maybe with some music but probably not as between Spotify and stuff I have on disc no relal need . But my view that cloud cannot replace local storage on mobile and additionally personal storage that you can control is vindicated. I have no real need for any of the advanced Office functions at all it was just the file storage and general familiarity with Office (actually I mostly use Libre Office personally which is ample for me) but all the other enterprise stuff zero use to me.
But what a PR cluster f**k . Why haven’t they at least capitalised on this and announced 50 or 100 GB free storage when you buy one of the new MSFT flagship phones (personally I think they should be bundling Office 365 for 3yrs with them as it has very low real cost to MS) . After years of being very sceptical of MS (and just using desktop Windows because I had to) then being persuaded by Nokia move to WP to give it a go then liking the vision for tying the desktop together I feel very disappointed. I’ve put up with a lot of **** from MS on WP – delays, delays, delays, missing features, missing ecosystem and support, garbage/canceled devices, delays delays and more delays.
I’m teetering on the edge vacillating whether to purchase a 950 or XL or whether the lack of ecosystem (I’m going to have to wait to see at launch- if they ever do actually launch,whether can replace missing apps/functionality through built in stuff and the browser) and MSFT’s complete seeming indifference to this product line is just too much risk. And this is just the sort of decision that pushes me that bit further away. MSFT increasingly (they always have been really just pretending to cloak themselves) look like a company only about Enterprise not average consumers. Can you trust any MS service offer again, not I think. At which point what is the point of entrusting critical back ups only to their cloud , none.
Mobile last, cloud headed that way
Can you explain as to why the below was an issue:
“Since we started to roll out unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 consumer subscribers, a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings. In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average.”
Is there not enough room to store or back up each persons PC, Movie Collection, DVR etc…?
Someone on Hacker News made an interesting point. Punishing everyone because of a few bad users is a convenient excuse: perhaps the real problem is that Azure can’t scale?
I’m really surprised at the lack of foresight from the product manager on this. You promised something small (like the bonus camera roll + 15GB free storage) and now you’re taking it away. Heck, you’re going lower than you were before you added the bonus storage.
You can at least say the 1TB thing was a test and not widely rolled out. But the measly change which you’re backpeddling? That’s going to lose you a LOT of customers. You now have no easily perceivable advantage over the other consumer cloud storage providers to your intended audience AND you’ve shown that you’re willing to take away things you gave while raising prices.
As for the unlimited storage: you really don’t think there’s a middle ground between 1TB and unlimited? Someone lacks critical thinking skills.
This is just like the mobile industry. You offer unlimited data and <1% of people are using 500GB of data a month? Oh, better cap everyone at 1GB and charge $10/GB over that.
I’ve been using Microsoft cloud storage since back when it was still Live Mesh Sync and this is a really bad decision. It’s one thing to deal with the people storing 75 TB, it is quite another to reduce storage back down to 5GB from around 30GB (with camera roll) when people have begun to rely on it. With this change you are completely behind your competitors, I don’t see how I can stay with Onedrive instead of going to Google or somewhere else.
I now have waste a bunch of time over the holidays switching over family members who I convinced to use Onedrive for their photo storage, that I’m sure have exceeded the your new 5GB limit at this point. Thanks for nothing MS.
Way to kill a great service… My LUMIA’s (yes, someone who actually owns a Windows Phone) camera roll alone is at 8.34GB and was only going to grow once I purchased a 950 with, what I’ve heard, a great camera.. As a user since the Live Mesh days, this move is a stab in the back. If this is truly caused by ‘unlimited’ accounts using more storage than you anticipated, then redefine ‘unlimited’ along with a way to purchase enough storage to expand to WHATEVER size a legitimate customer might need. If you want to use 75TB, then let math do its job and have them pay $1.99/50GB; $3056.64 per month should persuade them to adjust their usage.
On the more realistic side, I currently have ~56GB of files stored in OneDrive, most of which are synced across my desktop, Surface Pro, and Surface Pro 2, whose cost alone should help bolster your bottom line and provide this service to those that have purchased your products. Just last night, your latest Windows Update completely hosed my Windows 10 desktop to the point where I couldn’t open Task Manager, load web pages in Chrome or Edge, or even run programs to help fix the problem through Command Line… Getting my machine into Safe Mode and reverting to a restore point didn’t even solve the problem. So,… I backed up the few files scattered around my machine that WEREN’T already backed up to OneDrive, and refreshed my machine. An hour or two later, my machine was back to ‘normal’ minus a few programs and apps needing reinstallation. Most of the files I needed to keep were synced back down to my machine once it was refreshed.
What helped keep this process from being a truly royal pain?? OneDrive. Why?? Because all of the hardware and software I’ve purchased from Microsoft has helped pay for that storage. If Satya Nadell’s “Windows as a Service” is being backed by a measly 5GB of cloud storage, the precedence for gutting services that loyal customers rely upon will certainly drive them away.
My previous attempt to post this resulted in a 500 error. Getting a large enough flood of negative feedback to cause internal server errors??
Bad move. Disloyal to customers – some like me as a long time customer since SkyDrive time.
It is disingenuous to say that you are changing because a few OneDrive users abuse the service. I am sure you can identify them and adjust their usage without affecting everyone else.
If you were simply honest and said “we think reducing the free storage we had committed to offering as free will cause more user to have to pay for the service” then at least I’d say you are honest.
Most users really take time to evaluate which storage company they will go with as it is going to be a long term relationship. OneDrive has shown that you can’t count on them not changing the rules and therefore I will have to look for a new on. Predictability. We all need it.
If only 5GB free space, you should let us remove the onedrive app from windows 10!
We want to use other better sync application with more space like Google Drive!
There are enough places on the web that offer storage solutions on their cloud, for instance Dropbox, for a free account you can get a lot of space, I have 50 Gb. For a paid subscription you get 1TB of space…Google Drive…cloud based. What I mean its not the end of the world, but Microsoft should know how much they can reach, how close can they get to the sun before getting burned. Practically what you’re doing is good marketing.
Microsoft, you’re not changing OneDrive, you’re reducing the amount of storage available, drastically in some cases. And you’re doubling the cost of additional storage (50GB coast $1.99/month instead of 100GB costing $2).
OK so if some people are abusing the system, then just deal with them rather than cutting storage for everyone.
Like Just Wondering said, how do you know that people are backing up movie libraries and several computers?
I hope Google milks this, e.g. “If you lost 10GB of storage on OneDrive, we’ll give it back to you on Google Drive”.
I don´t believe it!
I use OneDrive everyday.
I can´t stay without my files, retrieve me my plan please!
This is absolutely disgusting and unacceptable on every level.
Revert this decision immediately.
Thanks, Microsoft!
I’ve just spent this year convincing my family and friends to use OneDrive to backup their photos from both phone and computer. Now I have to convice them to use Google Drive so we can easily share files and calendars cause I’m not dealing with OneDrive anymore. In my opinion OneDrive was the best alternative out there but with the new price plan and everything I’m switching..
Please Microsoft, people are moving to Microsoft eco system with surface pro 4, surface book and soon with the 950 and 950XL. I completely understand that some people abused the service but this does not mean we should limit people from using Microsoft services. I am in mobile sales and I always talk about one drive to my customers because of the of free storage and also how well it works across all devices. Microsoft is doing some great things and I support Microsoft all the way but please do not penalize all users due to some user abusing the services.
Bad move. VERY bad move! Microsoft, I am done with you. This is both inexcusable and forgivable. Even if you do an about face on this, the trust has been forever destroyed.
When metrics and reporting go wrong!!! This is a huge mistake!!!
Allowing a few people to upload 75TB should not in turn punish millions of users. You should have put restrictions on those accounts like you are doing now by going back to 1TB which is good enough for most people.
Camera backup really? How to put a damper on the 950 launch this month. As a consumer this move would steer me away from a Windows Phone for sure. I would ask myself what next?
Just when I thought Microsoft was doing things right someone looks at the numbers the wrong way and makes a really bad decision that will tarnish the good work you have done this year. Shame on you!
Counting the hours or is it days before this bad decision is reversed.
Microsoft just killed OneDrive !!!
Loss of confidence in the rest of the products . The Cloud has to offer more and continuity.
Those who have it are laid donkeys !!!
Thanks you, onedrive team, me and my wife will move to google drive soon, i think i should sell my 930 lumia to buy other phone, thanks for your help to my decision.
**** move Microsoft, **** move
OneDrive Team: Sometimes crunching numbers to make a decision, is a poor approach. Generally speaking trying to solve a problem by looking at a bunch of numbers is a narrow-sighted method of problem solving. Instead of lookin inward, at what OneDrive needed, to be successful, you should have focused your attention on your clients, and potential clients, by projecting their future needs. By catering to your own, internal needs you have alienated your client base. I understand that change is necessary to evolve, but I feel that OneDrive has taken a step in the wrong direction with this approach.
Take some time to read all of these comments, and reflect on your decisions.
MS is updating the OneDrive for Business app – which will now be using the standard OneDrive sync/storage.
Reads to me they’re bumping the consumer to make space for the OneDrive for Business users.
Most displeased Office 365 Home subscriber w/ 10TB of storage ( 3TB used).
Richard move Microsoft, Richard move.
What’s another name for Richard?
I switched to Dropbox a month ago and have been incredibly happy I did.
Fast sync, extremely reliable, now weird bugs, no opening an edited document on a different computer weeks later only to find I’ve only got the original, no finding half of my data in the onedrive recycle bin for no reason.
I would highly recommend switching to Dropbox to anyone considering it, my only regret is wasting years on Onedrive.
I bought my Lumia because of the good cloud extensions, the easiest sync between my MS-based devices. And yes, I got 15G of Onedrive for my photos. Now I have to think about putting my photos to another cloud storage because OneDrive won’t be the cheapest one… 30G -> 5G ***? I was thinking about buying the 100G/1.99$ but now I know it would be a mistake. I don’t trust you anymore. You give and take twice as much later.
And yes, the largest shame is that I bought a Lumia and I’ll be handled the same way who has bought iPhone or one of the Android phones… I’m seriously afraid of what will happen to my phone after Windows 10 upgrade… will there be a monthly fee for using the win10 on my phone? Or should I install a linux-based OS on it too?
Shame, MS.
This is a terrible, terrible, terrible mistake and really stupid. You may as well tell people to switch to Google Drive. 5 GB is a ridiculous limit in 2015. I constantly defend and promote MS products, but moves like this just make me want to ditch the whole MS stack. I love my Windows phone as well, but I can see that MS really doesn’t want to continue that product line either. So I will have to research an Android phone with Google services and install them on my 5-6 Windows 10 devices.
This doesn’t exactly sound very Cloud First, Mobile First.
I’ve got about 1.5 TB out there, I’m a hobbyist photographer and do take on the occasional client to offset costs. I like having the ability to upload my images to OneDrive and know they are secure, and then be able to access them from my Surface Pro while I’m on the road. All while sharing these images with friends and family.
I bought the Surface Pro and Office 365, and have been using the Lumia phone recently because of the unlimited one drive. It allows me to have all my devices connected to the same storage, and be able to quickly get my files from any device I’m using.
I produce around 1TB of files per year that I’d like to keep, I’m not backing up a full DVR or a bunch of desktops to OneDrive, I understood how the storage worked, but because a few people are overusing the storage, I get penalized, and now I have to go out and find a different solution.
This is really bad customer services, and even worse for customer retention, there is now no reason to pick Office365 over Google Apps for a home user.
Absolutely ridiculous! I’ve spent so much time telling everyone how they should switch from iCloud and Google Docs and now this?! I moved my wife from iCloud and now you guys have decided to downgrade from 15 to 5 gigs essentially to prove a point. Why would you punish the vast majority of your customers as opposed to dealing with those who are abusing the service?
I’m seriously now thinking of not upgrading to the 950XL, get rid of my **** surface, cancel my O365 subscritption and just use my Mac which I hate; just to freakin prove a point. I’m so disappointed in Microsoft, so disappointed!!!
Very concerned about this changed. For someone who is all into the Microsoft ecosystem, I now have doubt. I was looking forward to a new 950XL phone and a new tablet/2-in-1. Now I will consider using Office through work (using the Home Use option and dropping Office 365 Home) and dropping Groove Music. Why? Because there are options, mostly better, for storage, etc. Only Office is the best for me.
Not sure why Microsoft wants to alienate current customers and potential customers. If you are using the free option, you can easily go with Google (or pay DropBox). Not reason to pay for OneDrive storage.
Microsoft is becoming really good and productive at some things……including annoying and repeatedly disappointing it’s loyal users and pushing away potential user….It seems that I was all wrong all these years and other platforms are truly loyal user oriented…
This is a terrible way to treat customers. When I subscribed to Office 365 I was assured that OneDrive was transitioning (not to unlimited) to 10 TB storage which would have been great. This was a selling point. I’m using about 350 GB right now and it’ll probably take years to get over 1 TB but I’m sure I’ll get there eventually. Microsoft has gone back on the promise it made.
Why can’t they just set a new max like 2 TB or 5 TB? Oh and they also ruined OneDrive functionality with the removal of the “online only” option. I’m not used to giving up functionality and storage. Normally it works in the other direction… especially when you make the jump to being a paying subscriber!
Microsoft, please make this right!
Why does Microsoft hate OneDrive now? First, taking the only functionality that made it great in Windows 8 and removing it from Windows 10 (the placeholders). Now shrinking the storage after everyone uploaded their stuff to your service for what seems to be a last-ditch money grab before you completely abandon the product?
Not cool. I do not see this turning out well for anyone involved. Except Dropbox, they will likely benefit.
And you know what’s the worst part of all dear Microsoft? Not a single word of apology. Only blaming your customers. Who in the PR department signed off on this blog post..?
You’re ******* loyal users off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Microsoft, or how to ruin in one blow all the efforts made in the last few years to become more attractive.
Microsoft, or how to **** off your customers, with gusto.
No, really. Way to go MS. This will be remembered.
Goodbye my friend goodbye. I don’t want your win 10, after this case.
Goodbye Microsoft. Hello Google. Is that simple.
This has got to be the worst decision Microsoft has made in months! Do a (smart) compromise instead: 10TB to Office subscriptions, 40GB free to Windows 10 Mobile users and 20GB free to Windows 10 users. And get back placeholders please.
This is a ridiculous move Microsoft. Classic bait and switch. I’m one of your more rabid fanboys. I have been with you through a lot of the **** you have put users through. Vociferously defended you against friends, family and acquaintances. But this is ridiculous. Please change policy and make it more user friendly. Stop trying to nickel and dime your customers.
To me this is equivalent of Comcast introducing data caps, just low enough to punish streaming. Similarly you are keeping the free storage low enough so many customers will have to buy more storage. Know this. If you go forward with this plan, a lot of customers will move away to competing services. Google and Dropbox, probably, being the most obvious choices.
When you’re on the cusp of major hardware releases, Surface and Lumia, the last thing you need is more bad press than there already is against you. You don’t need me to tell you that, but this move is so bone-headed it seems like I have to. I’ll be waiting it out instead of buying the 950 on day one. Unless this ridiculous policy changes I reckon so will a lot of Windows phone users. Do the smart thing here. And don’t do some lame “we’ll give you 10GB instead of 5GB” and claim you listened to customer feedback. Do right by the users and loyalists that have supported you and your half hearted efforts throughout the years on Windows phone.
Maybe everyone should pull their stuff from OneDrive and move it to like Google Drive or Dropbox. Let’s riot this and leave them in the dust for pulling just a **** stunt. They do not care about their customers, they are just worried about themselves.
If you want to win mobile device battle with Google and Apple, you should make cloud service better with more free stuff. 100GB free storage would be much better to win customers to Windows ecosystem. 5GB would just blow everyone away (including loyal one)
Why Microsoft why????you have the most beatiful and powerful mobile phones but you do everything to destroy this phones. I have a Nokia Lumia 925 and i lived thanks OneDrive because ,like you Know (unless i think) the storage of my phone is limitated. When i use all of 5 gb of OneDrive for photos and videos and music and when i use all of 16 gb of storage of my phone what do i have to do? A lot of people use OneDrive and it was one of the few things that i used to be happy to possess a lumia phone but now i Will buy an android … Every things that were only lumia special things now there are also in android and ios
If it looks like a t*rd and smells like a t*rd, it doesn’t matter how you try to whitewash it under the guise of ‘productivity and collaboration’. Techies are smart people – don’t insult our intelligence.
I use a Windows Phone only for the OneDrive integration – that’s gone – my next phone will be an iPhone or Android.
I pay a monthly fee for a 100GB OneDrive Account – you just rolled that back to 50GB. I’m gone – moving to dropbox or google (or use more of my free Amazon prime storage)
You’re forcing everyone to use Windows 10, but now you’re yanking the free storage out from under them – that’s a bait and switch.
If you’re trying to lose customers actively, this is a great plan.
This sounds like the kind of plan accountants and marketing people come up with in trying to monetize a service even more.
Overall this is a dumb decision – and everyone can see that it’s a dumb decision. You’re going to lose tons of customer goodwill over this change.
I find it suspicious that the brilliant folks at Microsoft were caught off guard by the tiny percentage of users who went crazy on the unlimited storage plan – there is no way you didn’t expect that. This must have been in the cards all along; the old bait-and-switch. I really thought Microsoft was on a roll lately, but decisions like this make me question the turnaround. The service just isn’t as robust as Dropbox or Google Drive – and now the plans are weaker as well. I can’t see this working out well for you guys, but whatever, you call the shots. I’m still rooting for Microsoft, for what it’s worth.
This is the worst move since scrapping Zune music software. I think as a company you should rethink this move. A better move would be to keep all free accounts the same, and cap office accounts.
This is ******* stupid. I guess I research someplace else to store my files. Holy ****.
This is ridiculous. Microsoft, as a company you CANNOT say 10TB now .. unlimited tomorrow .. and then say ~1TB is the MAX. Where is your promise ?
And also how come you cut the free storage from 30GB to 5GB, that is extremely disappointing!
We now live in a world where transparency is demanded. Your user base is not stupid. The changes you are making do not align with your reason for the changes. The real reasons are:
– You thought other cloud providers would offer unlimited, and they never did; hence, profits are lower than optimal
– You think that if you decrease free limits, more people will subscribe
– Some users are storing well in excess of what you thought they would
– Instead of moving music to the Music folder for Groove Music streaming, some users are copying music there (because 1) you are altering the files there, and 2) there is a limit to the number of files allowed)
A more logical solution to the problem you’ve illustrated is:
– Change “unlimited” to 1TB; grandfather 10TB for existing subscribers
– Provide additional price points at 2, 5 and 10TB
– Make no changes to free storage, or at worst, grandfather current allowances for existing subscribers
– Do not alter files when placed into the Music folder, and increase the file limit
If u promises to offer unlimited storage, please give unlimited storage. In addition, they could punish only the guys which stored illegal files warning or blocking these ones. It’s time for gain market and this will no contribute for increasing the situation.
The Windows 10 OneDrive debacle and now that.
So long and thanks for all the fish
What the heck!?!? its bad enough they will drop the camera upload, but am I really going to lose my loyalty bonus space?
I quite literally JUST moved all my stuff form google drive to onedrive, and now im going to have to move it back because it will shrink down to the point of useless? WTHeck M$
You can see individual users of your service, and those that took it too far (even though they did nothing wrong, you offered it and they used it) so why take it out on the people loyal to this service?
typical bait and switch
Time to dust off my handy Dropbox Referral Link. Oh look, here it is:
https://db.tt/txoSVbz5
I understand having to take control of a situation that’s spiraling out of control, but everyone here has called it. When you motivation is to take care of the problem users, you find a solution for them quietly. This reeks of wanting nothing more than to force people onto a payment plan when they were happy on a free one.
Am I going to lose my loyalty space too?
Wow, Microsoft…
I can’t tell you how mad I am… I’m not only mad because you force me to use another provider for this now, I’m mad because you hurt yourself by doing this.
First you give Windows 10 for free to people and start being nice. Windows 10 –> the OS that is supposed to link together PCs and portable devices more than ever. And then you do this to fight back the good development. You just make it harder for the users to live with a seamless connection between their devices by forcing them to use stuff like google drive or something.
What’s the deal with that?
You know, I’m so mad that I don’t even know what to write, so I’m just going to write this:
POTATO! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
I hope you will think about it and I hope that the internet will rage… ಠ_ಠ
Well played, and Im throwing bananas around my cage over this.
What BS they are pulling….
“let punish everyone” *****…
This is insane. Microsoft just lost my trust. Why would I trust Microsoft again knowing that it can potentially screw me up in the future again????
the comments sections these days are pretty telling as to how much corporations give a **** about the consumer. see all the replies? no? right.. they couldn’t care less.
Now where am I supposed to backup the photos I take with my Lumia? 5GB is too little, Dropbox’s 2GB is even less, Google Drive is non-existent on Windows Phone, and local storage is risky. Way to go Microsoft, you idiots. Now there are even fewer reasons to hang on to Windows Phone.
Im surprised with all these postings, that M$ doesn’t reduce them, or only allow 3 words or 20 letters!
sorry, trying to be funny, when all I feel is ****** off!
Afff… It appears that Microsoft wants eat Google’s dust for ever.
Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
Did you realize that you are affecting a massive amount of users with this? This is an evil decision… a decision of a Microsoft that I though we have had left in the past.
Another clear example of Microsoft being the capitalist pigs they’ve always been. There is no money to be made it offering free storage. So what do they do to those of use who were appreciative of their generosity??? “Ahh, we were just kidding. We’re going to need you to give all that back.” Unbelievable.
I wonder if there was something in the terms and agreements that I allowed for the 15GB free additional storage for Camera Uploads that stated they could just take that away at any time? Hmmm…any lawyers on this forum who would like to chime in?
Dropbox, MEGA, Box, and Google Drive here I come. They all have better interfaces and management, too.
Goodbye, OneDrive. I came because low prices, but I’m going back to Dropbox.
Microsoft
I am an Office 365 subscriber and a Groove Music Pass subscriber. I also have a Lumia 1020 and am (was) planning on getting a Surface Pro 4.
1. How the **** can you do this move and not expect to lose customers, myself included?
2. How can you convince me (us) to move my stuff to the cloud, which I did, give me plenty of space to do it, and then, all of a sudden, drastically cut my space by 90%, from 10 TB to 1 TB only??
3. I do not abuse your storage allowance, though you do not, ANYWHERE, state what your definition of “UNLIMITED” means.
4. Do you seriously believe you can fool us, by blaming a few users abuse of storage, to limit 90% of storage allowance for ALL your personal users?
5. If abuse was the case, then you could easily notify those offending users to remove their files, maintaining 10 TB of storage as a limit for everyone, PERIOD.
6. I can understand you limiting free storage to whatever you want. But to impose such a drastic cut for EXISTING PAYING users, is downright dishonest.
I DO NOT HAVE 75 TB IN MY ONEDRIVE, BUT I DO HAVE OVER 1TB BECAUSE I TRUSTED YOUR WORD!
Having over a TB in not dificult – put all your music (which you asked for), pictures and documents there, and it’s done!
“Mobile first, cloud first” remember???
First the removal of placeholders, and now this..
You just can’t help shooting yourselves in the foot, can you?
You’re so short sighted, it’s ridiculous..
Good night, MSFT.
Have a good dream.
Rest in peace.
Really!!! some people used more (of those unlimited) punish them! I’ve been using OneDrive since Mesh, and every time there was a news since then, I should have read it while being seated! There was so many bad news since then:
No more PC to PC sync
No more Smart File Place Holders
No more PC Desktop Control
No more access to other PC’s file (and then it came back)
Horrible Win8 app
The one thing OneDrive was good in it, was the amount of storage and then Google Drive you can buy as much as you want! Why can’t you guys sell? if you want more money then ask for money, just 2 plans!!! 50GB really?
Hate to say, but I have been looking for other storage solution to move to since last night!
horrendous move, such a major mistake for a “cloud first” company. I don’t see any reason to stay with Onedrive, in addition to the competitive features like google and dropbox added to their services before this stupid ill-advised move.
Like others, I was planning to purchase a Lumia 950 and replace my Xbox 360 soon. With the news today, as a long time MS advocate, I feel saddened and concerned. Whist noone is owed something for free, I do feel that the service was promoted based on certain expectations. Until very recently for example we have been pushed to add music to OneDrive to play through Groove. Now we are being told to remove files or pay, even if we are long term users with grandfathered quotas.
I also now have the fun task of explaining to family and friends that they now need to remove photo albums, etc, that I have advised them to store online.
Don’t Microsoft just love to self sabotage. PR disaster.
As much as I wanted to go with a new MS phone too, I’ve decided to go with one of the new Nexus phones. Love it!! Pics are all backed up on Google (unlimited for pics!) or use part of the free 15GB of storage – far better than the new 5GB free from MS). Possibly upgrade to 1TB in the very near future and just move everyone off OneDrive and be done with it. All of my client’s backup software supports Google and Dropbox too. Sad that MS is doing this – they really miss opportunities – lost users to stay on Edge when it was released with no extension support (now make’em wait until next year). Built-in Win10 apps like Mail can’t even re-size the panes, change the reading view, etc. – makes people use another app and good luck getting people to look twice at your products down the road!!
Wow, this is a real blow. I have MANY clients that I’ve been recommending OneDrive to and hoping it would continue to improve (placeholders coming back, speed improvements, etc.) but this is exactly the opposite. In fact besides the 1TB with Office 365, it’s not even competitive anymore!! I’d much prefer Google Drive 100GB for $1.99 than 50GB of OneDrive for the same price. Horrible decision from MS. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to stop carrying the torch for MS and recommending this. Will start moving clients to Dropbox or Google.
Just lost my business, Microsoft. It’s not just the “unlimited” issue, it’s trust. This was a full-on, unabashed bait and switch. I bought into Office 365 because of the unlimited storage on OneDrive – I don’t even use Office very much. I also don’t abuse the “unlimited” nature of OneDrive (I have about 300gb uploaded between photos, videos, and other files.) You are losing my business because you’ve destroyed my trust. How am I supposed to believe anything you offer anymore? How can I trust that my files are safe and secure when you randomly decide to decrease storage options? You know who doesn’t do anything like this? Apple. Apple may seem slow on the uptake of changes, and get criticism for taking so long to increase iCloud storage amounts and decrease costs, but they’re slow because they think things through thoroughly so they don’t disappoint their users. And their users reward them by being loyal. Even Google Drive is preferable to OneDrive at this point. Extremely, EXTREMELY disappointed. I really hope you see a massive negative impact due to this, Microsoft. You deserve it.
it’s a shame!I use onedrive since it’s beginning,in all these years I was happy to this service,but you now think only about making money and is damaging all of your clients!your apps are not to the peer of the others ( Android,iOs…)and now you don’t keep the promises sorts in your promotions….Dear Microsoft,I think that you are losing many clients…it’s a really bad step, bad step….Goodbye onedrive and welcome google drive!
what an overreaction!!! Completely insane!!
I pay for O365 and have 1TB that is fine I get it although having the thought of unlimited storage was enough to make me sign up. Now once my renewal is up in a few months I’ll have to reevaluate this. I can get Office free from work and there are other less expensive options out there for storage.
Also why punish the people who use the service for free? If the violators are ones who are using up to 75TBs why not punish them and disable their accounts per the UAG? How do you expect to get adoption at 5GB?? iCloud offers 50GB for .99 cents a month!
I’ll still use O365 for it’s productivity suite for the time being but I can no longer recommend it as confidently as before. Not because of less storage but because of this step back in service. I could expect something like this from Google but not from Microsoft. Not until now.
This is a very bad idea. Limiting down the free offering and then making storage more costly. This is a step in the wrong direction and not a cloud first offering.
Completely agree. They’re punishing the free users unnecessarily! Why reduce them from 15GB to 5GB and also stop the 100GB offering for $1.99 to compete with other companies. All because some people abused the unlimited space!?! Perhaps it’s some financial decision behind the scenes. If not, I hope MS does a 180 and revert on some of these decisions as they have on other things after listening to user feedback. In the meantime it’s no more OneDrive for myself, my family, or any of my clients.
¿Y los que tenemos el bono de fidelidad cuando OneDrive era SkyDrive? ¿También nos lo van a quitar? De los 25GB que dieron de oferta, ¿nos van a quitar 20? En serio, van por mal camino. Es cierto que hay usuarios que abusan, pero no tienen por qué hacer pagar el error a todo el mundo solo por unos pocos. De verdad no es justo.
This is terrible. I’ve convinced many people to move to Windows Phone because of the camera and the camera roll storage. Now I’m pretty sure if they’re going to have to pay to store photos taken with their Windows Phone they’ll just go back to the other platforms with more apps.
Give me back my money, i don’t want your win 10, without normal onedrive
I feel so betrayed by Microsoft… I personally use a Surface Pro 3, a Lumia 920 (which I was planning to change for a Lumia 950…that is definitely not going to happen now!) and I was enjoying the free OneDrive storage to backup my photos, some music and my personal documents.(I only used 21 GB on the 200GB free storage through all the different offers)
I also was part of the Windows Insider program and was glad to provide feedback to Microsoft on Windows 10 on my different devices.
I feel so betrayed that I am no longer willing to participate and I will move to Google Drive!
I feel the same. I was really looking forward to upgrading from a 1520 to the 950, this move has made me questions if MS is a company I want to support. Not to mention the limited amount of apps I can use as storage replacement options for Onedrive – due to Windows lack of app support in general.
Early adopter (extra storage) + bonuses mean nothing now. Really? This is a pitiful. Shame on you.
What a terrible move. Top end users are abusing the system, so you make changes that most affect low end users. OneDrive was a great option for cloud backup, now there’s no reason to choose it over competitors.
I thought MS was going for a “Mobile First, Cloud first” approach? This is the exact opposite of that. Not to mention the terrible pricing options if more storage is needed.
OneDrive was progressible getting better and more competitive in this space, and it’s just taken a HUGE step back.
I’ve already signed up for dropbox, and will likely sign up for Flikr as well. I can’t recall the last time I’ve been this upset at MS.
Microsoft sucks
You knew people would sign up because of “unlimited” storage. You knew people would upload without a care since they didn’t need to worry about hitting a cap. Everyone nowadays needs cloud backup, and you knew you could sucker in some people by dangling this product in front of their faces. You knew they would become dependent. Now you go into the next phase of this plan, turn around and charge users more for less, butcher the product you offered and give the finger to loyal customers.
That is so evil.
That is so Microsoft.
You knew people would sign up because of “unlimited” storage. You knew people would upload without a care since they didn’t need to worry about hitting a cap. Everyone nowadays needs cloud backup, and you knew you could sucker in some people by dangling this product in front of their faces. You knew they would become dependent. Now you go into the next phase of this plan, turn around and charge users more for less, butcher the product you offered and give the finger to loyal customers.
That is so evil.
That is so Microsoft.
*** Microsoft! Please no!
The only reason I signed up for OneDrive was the unlimited storage. And now, after waiting for months for the “automatic upgrade to 10TB”, you break your promise? That is definitely enough, Microsoft – goodbye!
Disapponited, disapponited, disapponited… no more Microsoft , I must cancel my office 365 subscription too
This is an obvious ploy to boost your Office 365 subscription numbers. Meanwhile, you’ve left a very bad taste in the mouths of loyal fans who use your services from the beta release, who pay for your services, and who serve as a commission-free sales force for you.
If this is how you’re going to treat your customers, then I’m not sure you deserve my money. Here are the things you’ll lose from me:
* My OneDrive 100GB subscription
* My Office 365 Business subscription where I host my personal domain and email
* My Groove subscription
* My Xbox Live subscription
* I’ll also be returning the Microsoft Band 2 that is arriving tomorrow from Amazon.
* I won’t be buying the Lumia 950 XL that I pre-ordered, and I’ll be replacing my Lumia 925 with an Android phone.
* I’ll be selling two Xbox Ones and accessories on eBay.
* Also on eBay, two Xbox 360s and a ******** of game discs.
* eBay again, a Surface Pro 3 i7/512Gb, a Surface 1/128, and a Surface RT
And no, my anger is not solely over this idiotic move you’re making on OneDrive offerings, although that clearly shows your intention to become the new screw-and-gouge-your-customers Microsoft. You’ve been showing your true colors for some time now. I just can’t believe how a company I’ve rooted for for 25 years has become such a greedy, callous, EVIL husk of its former self.
F#@! you, Microsoft.
You and your PR team are working real hard on smoke and mirror.
What does people putting 75TB on their drive have to do with lowering the free (and limited) tier from 15GB to 5GB?
Just fess up that you deliberately gave a good deal to bait us, and now you try to milk us.
Way to bait and switch your loyal customers because of a few bad apples, assuming that this truly was the issue and you’re not just using the people uploading large amounts of data as the excuse to charge for OneDrive.
I started using OneDrive because of the storage provided by Microsoft, I even got quite a few friends to switch to it from Dropbox and Google Drive. I’ll be switching myself over to Box, Drive, or Dropbox and I’ll take my friends with me.
Paltry 5GB UNENCRYPTED data storage for backing up your settings, keychains and precious documents? No thanks MSFT.
So the average storage is 5.3 so you are moving more people into the paid for bracket. This is very disappointing and just done to make MS a bit of money which I can see backfiring!
Wow, talk about “bait and switch”!
I can’t tell you, Microsoft, how disappointed I am in this change. You made promises to your users, and now are breaking those promises. How do you expect your customers to believe anything that you tell them in the future? Just imagine what effect this is going to have on Microsoft’s reputation…not good.
This is an incredibly extreme over-reaction on your part to punish all your OneDrive users for the abuses of a few, and will not play out well for you with the computing public. It is a HUGE black eye for Microsoft! Can’t you see this?
I wonder why you guys keep forgetting that MS offers Office365 Personal accounts which come with 1TB of storage PLUS MS Office for a price of $6.99/month or $69.99/per year. Try to get 1TB from Google or Dropbox for $6.99 or even $5.83 if paid annually and get a copy of MS Office. Otherwise, you all sound like you wanted to get 30GB for free. Oh well, all freebies come to an end.
Looks like my files (and my monthly recurring charge) are moving to Google.
Gee, MSFT, when we though you were becoming cool and all, and we even found your Surface ads finally on the money….you screw us like this? Windows 10 relies on OneDrive…have you hired the team from Bitcasa? Or even worst…is Steve Balmer running OneDrive now?
I left Bitcasa and the $199 a month for this ****. Now I’m leaving you…
Don’t change 15GB free storage plan.please.
Someone must have been reading a book called How to lose customers and dissapoint people.
I just don’t understand this decision.
Just ****. Stupidest step from MS.
I will never buy Office 365 in future.
And will migrate to PC-BSD.
I really thought this was a fake article.
Just gobsmacked, this is such a bad move from MS. One drive encouraged me to move my entire eco system from google, looks like i’ll have to transition back there now. I’d imagine an upcoming announcement by google that will increase there storage now.
Probably the biggest customer betrayal this decade.
So long Microsoft. Never again.
MS what are you f***king doing???
5Gb for photos??? Really??? Idiocy!! Let’s your WinPhone go to… You push people to iOS&Android.
First you ruined OneDrive by removing placeholders in Windows 10 which is the main reason I used it back in Windows 8. Now you completely gimp the storage by pulling a bait and switch on paying customers. Not happy at all!
Kind of creepy that they knew what the contents of those huge accounts were (multiple PC backups, movies DVR recordings). Privacy concerns anyone?
well, I’ll take my business else where. I was planning on subscribing to the office 365 and using onedrive to archive all my pictures and videos. I’ll just continue using Google docs, Googledrive/dropbox etc.,
I don’t know who is in charge of OneDrive these days, but they are quickly working themselves out of a job. Between the 8.1 placeholder **** and now this…they are going to quickly become OnceDrive. Look at companies like Mozy and LogMeIn. They were once industry leaders. They pulled this kind of **** and now no one uses them. I understand you gotta make money, but give customers the product they want, not the one you want to give them because its hard or expensive. Make it work. People want a place to store their files, not a glorified collaboration site. Build it into the OS, make it affordable, remove the limits, and stop mucking with it! The only thing I hear from you guys on this blog now a days is bad news.
“a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings.”
How do you know what these users are storing? Are you allowed to look at my files?!
Obviously, I need to read the EULA, because this seems like a *huge* violation. I was just assuming basic privacy and security. I guess that’s what I get for making assumptions.
Very bad decision for those of us who have been loyal fans since day one. I invested in everything Microsoft including the Band 2, High end laptop, Lumia Icon, pre-ordered the Lumia 950 and 950XL, etc… Why should I suffer for what others are doing. And for that matter, what does the unlimited issue have to do with those of us who received the 15GB for being loyal customers? I guess this means Microsoft no longer considers us as loyal customers. I no longer feel loyalty to Microsoft which is a sad outcome after dealing with them for over 25 years.
well, this is unfortunate. dropbox, here I come.
Sinceramente é um belo tiro no pé da Microsoft. Assim nos obrigas ir para os concorrentes. Por favor revejam tal decisão e punam os que infringiram as regras.
Really bad decision. Shocked and disappointed Satya signed off on it. The trust you’ve broken here is going to have consequences far beyond just OneDrive.
Subscribed to O365 this past year, will not be renewing this year. Goodbye O365, hello DropBox.
From 30GB (incl camera bonus) to 5GB? You are trying very hard to make Google look better than you in comparison.
The difference is that i payed Microsoft for Windows 10 when I bought my computer, and I get an 83% cloud storage space decrease, whereas I didn’t pay anything to Google but they give me 15GB for free anyway.
Well, thanks a lot Microsoft. Thanks a lot.
I’ve uninstalled OneDrive from my phone and will now simply use Google Drive. It’ll take a bit more work to get OneDrive off of my W10 machines but I will take care of that shortly too. Nice work turning me away just as I was starting to use your services again
Now it has been baked right in to the OS they know the average user will just accept it and not look elsewhere so the market share won’t be affected very much, which is sad because they don’t deserve it pulling silly moves like this.
You promoted OneDrive for all your music backup in Windows 10, so that you can take your music with you! I have a Windows Phone (ICON) that has a 20mp camera with auto back up. Was a long time Hotmail to Outlook user 15+ years, had loyalty bonus, and bought office 2013 and 365 to tie everything in, xbox, phone, surface, windows 10 pro, now how is this supposed to work, considering our OneDrive backs up our settings of the devices as well. Just when the “New Microsoft” was making the right choices, you back-stab your loyal followers. I had 40gb permanent + 1TB for 365. Recommended it to many people, and my work, now I will starting considering my options to leave it all behind.
What were you expecting to happen with this?
Everyone will be happy to pay more for far less? All over your website(s) you advertise that you get 1TB with your subscription. That is not cool. Bait and Switch concepts do not go well with consumers.
http://1drv.ms/20rkSzh
See? I’m even linking to a screenshot of your website using OneDrive!
I’ve finally invested in uploading my data, and you’re pulling this?
Yesterday I considered myself a loyal Microsoft customer. Upgraded to W10 on day one, still rocking my Lumia Icon, Outlook.com, OneDrive, Xbox 360, Xbox One and on down the line. I routinely praise the OneDrive offering as the best out there and even converted my kids off of Google accounts to Microsoft Accounts. I was getting ready to pull the trigger on an O365 subscription in the next few weeks.
That ended about 10 minutes ago when I read this blog post. I will be switching my cloud storage to another provider in the near future. I’ll keep using Outlook.com until they decide to decrease the value of that offering as well. I had already resolved myself to ditching Windows Phone next year since Microsoft themselves don’t seem to care about it’s future, but was planning to keep all of my services with them. No more.
Back to Apple I go.
You had a perfect setup and I actually loved how it worked over multiple platforms. I was just on the 100GB plan and even though I also pay for Office 365, it was perfect paying for some additional storage to have piece of mind that my stuff was always synced to the cloud.
I think you got this wrong and really punishing all of us for actions of a few.
Bye Felicia!
These changes don’t make sense in a ‘mobile-first, cloud-first’ world.
OneDrive was leading the way in cloud storage. Microsoft has been building apps that drive OneDrive adoption: Groove music folder, Xbox One Upload Studio uploads, 20MP PureView photo upload, 4k video upload, just to name a few. This change feels like a temper tantrum because consumer adoption of Office 365 subscriptions is not as fast as expected. Paying a subscription for Office doesn’t make sense for everyone. These kinds of industry transitions take a long time. I am an advanced customer, and it has taken years to transition the way I store my files, the way I store my music, and to help my wife and extended family make the same transition. Microsoft, please re-think these changes!
Ok, Windows 10 is buggy mess, Windows 10 mobile is not even released and its still buggy mess. Now OneDrive is useless. I really want to like you MS, but what is there left to like?
Wow. This is just being jerks. 5GBs? How that is that even competitive? Do you actually want to attract users? It’s like you guys are actively trying to kill OneDrive. You remove placeholders from Windows, ship Windows 10 with no good option to see your OneDrive files (why do I need to use a browser to see the files I have stored in OneDrive instead of being able to have an app or my placeholders), have ****** speeds, and the list continues.
I have been recommending OneDrive to people for the last couple of years and now I don’t know that I can do that.
It’s also sad that you can’t manage to have a working blog. It keeps failing to load. I guess this is why you want to have fewer customers.
Leaving MS services before early 2016
Are you serious Microsoft? I love ya, but this is the stupidest overreaction in history. Nuff said: http://www.neowin.net/news/microsofts-onedrive-changes-are-a-senseless-overreaction-to-a-problem-it-created
Das man den Speicher bei Office 365 auf 1TB begrenzt stellt wohl für die Mehrheit kein Problem dar aber das man nun den kostenlosen Speicher auf 5GB begrenzen will ist ein Witz, das reicht nicht annähernd für Fotos/Kameraaufnahmen und dann soll da auch noch Musik/Dokumente drauf… wenigstens für den privaten gebrauch sollte das in normalem Rahmen doch auch ohne kostenpflichtiges Abo möglich sein, anstelle des Abos wechseln viele da wohl eher zur Konkurrenz.
This is totally ridiculous. 5GB for free users? I guess the new mantra on the OneDrive team is “just use someone else”, because that’s what all your customers will do. Not to mention that you’ve already completely ruined the OneDrive integration in Win10 with the lack of placeholder files, then made vague promises as to a “fix” that never occurred. And now after encouraging Windows users to save to the cloud to screw those same users out of the free storage you promised?
Nadella needs to fire everyone whatever executive is in charge of this team and making these horrendous decisions.
I’m a 365 subscriber and moved to OneDrive because of the unlimited offer. I’m now nearly at 1TB. All that moving and consolidating files for nothing as I now can’t trust OneDrive or Microsoft. This petty move saved some short term pennies, but cost sense. Office 365 just lost its primary selling point for me, and I don’t trust you now.
I’m sure this has been stated already, but I want to make sure the MS knows that this is very bad idea. While I understand that you can’t have people storing hundreds of TB on their servires, there is no reason to punish people who are using the free accounts and forcing them to go to another service. In this case the only winners are Google, Apple, Dropbox, and others that have higher and cheaper stores options.
Shame on you! Unlimited is unlimited, you cannot accuse anyone for using what they did pay for!!!
You did not sell an 10 TB storage … you did sell UNLimited storage!!!!!!!!
Long live Amazon for client focus!!!!!!
I guess no one here pays for Office365 accounts? Why should MS care about free users? If you’re not happy with their service go look elsewhere. Don’t forget to pay for you MS Office suite though.
I am Office 365 subscriber, and I owned Surface Pro 3, Lumia 930, Xbox One, and I love Microsoft products and services, but this move look like very silly to attract new potential users to start using Microsoft services, they will go Google services instead. Also this move will lose many existing users too.
Dear MSFT,
I don’t use Office 365 to enjoy unlimited onedrive storage. I don’t need it.
I have a free account which sum 40 GB (15 free storage, 15 for photos upload and 10 for loialty). I was happy with this.
And now i found that you plan to launch this “innovative move” which it will offer me from the next year only 5 GB?. What can i do? Only I can “congratulate” you and “thank” you. :((((((
First of all unlimited means unlimited, if you don’t specify from the beginning what is “reasonable usage” of your “unlimited” storage which is a limit in the end.
Even so, you found users who store over 75TB in your servers. How many? 5, 6 hundred or 1, 2 thousand? Or many more, but not all of your users. NOT ALL OF YOUR USERS. Why you punish all? Where is you credibility?
If you maintain this bad, evil and stupid decision in the name of “productivity and colaboration” (how hilarious arguments) you can count on me leaving your cloud service forever. And after that you can take your onedrive and stick it in your a#s.
:(((((
Very bad move, Microsoft. Hope that you’ll change your mind, before it’s too late.
As a MS Customer since over 25 years and WP fan of the first hour – this is a joke.
Not only punishing regular Users because some did not behave. But also making the OneDrive Offering worse than the competition. This is outright ridiculous. Maybe this Blog as hijacked or something. This can’t be true.
I’ve got 10TB Storage available and only use a fraction. But still…
Why do you punish us for the ones that were abusing the storage. You offered unlimited and people took you up on it. Now you decide it was a bad idea. You need to get a better understanding of integrity.
May we expect a partial refund due to this change?
This is such a bad move. If you’re really only have issues with the top 1-5% of users then don’t remove features from your small but growing user base. while reading reddit this morning a lot of people were going to cancel preorders of the new windows phone. This service is part of many other products, this impacts other ms products….
please rethink what this means to ALL of your end users and the impact on other services/products.
This is bad move for your users, period. The only thing this will do is ensure that your users evaluate other cloud storage services.
Maybe that’s what you want? I have no idea. This doesn’t sound like the direction of the “new” Microsoft though.
I am avid Microsoft fan and IT professional. This move is going to make it very difficult to explain to my users why they should use your service.
Please re-evaluate this decision.
@Onedrive team,
What does the line–
If you are using more than 5 GB of free storage, you will continue to have access to all files for at least 12 months after these changes go into effect in early 2016. In addition, you can redeem a free one-year Office 365 Personal subscription (credit card required), which includes 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
mean??
Does that mean every user using Onedrive freely can redeem to get free Office + 1 TB for 1 year. Then given certain time and downgrade to free – tier plan.
I’m onedrive user since its day 1, i got loyalty bonus, free 25GB storage, got all childhood and old memories saved there that took years to collect.. and Highly disappointed with this news, even though im not sure if i’m on affected list or not. The unlimited storage for office 365 users causing heavy load on servers does make sense but what crime did 15-30GB users did ***** being punished with them?? i mean, 5GB! seriously.. ?? This is 2015 and my phone has just pictures above 5GB.. will soon move to mega nz with 50GB free storage!
Long live MSFT for screwing over its customers!
Seriously, someone uses 75 TB and you decided to move below the average of your customers’ data storage? I thought with new leadership, MSFT is more sensible. How naïve I was.
But don’t you worry. My data will be gone soon enough. Heck, there’s Google drive. There is weiyun. There are plenty of alternatives. I just need to tell my son to expect something other than a surface pro for the holidays.
What a pile of ****!
The 15+15Gb was just a bait-and-switch!
MS said they could offer unlimited storage due to the performance of their storage and server solutions. I guess this says a lot about their server offerings and their inability to handle the service offered. How on earth can you penalize everyone for people using the service as offered? MS =/= Customer Satisfaction.
This is a very and stupid move!!!
Do you really think that will take any advantage of this! Even at this time that you have to a and need to conquist more users to you services ??
With this stupid move, you will only loose more and more users to google services and other company services!!
Very bad move Microsoft! Don´t do this! You will regret this!!!
Reconquist the users that you will loose will not be easy AT ALL!
Goodbye Microsoft! Hello Google and Apple! And I say this with sadness…
резать 15 Гб места для фоток это очень плохой шаг – вы же сами убирали поддержку SD из своих смартов, апеллируя к тому что они дают 15 Гб в облаке.
So, since the new Windows 10 integrates OneDrive heavily into it’s system, you are pulling back on it? Okay, seems legit.
I am an IT consultant. Currently, I have a client who is evaluating Office 365 (E3) vs Google Business. I have been trying to encourage the O365 route due to the office suite. I understand that this blog post is not about the business product, but clearly if Microsoft is willing to cause disruptions in its consumer business, there is no reason to believe that down the road such disruptions can also be inflicted upon its business customer base.
I understand the issue with a few outliers that are abusing the service, but many of the changes do not address this ostensible rationale. How do ANY of the reductions apart from the elimination of unlimited storage address these outliers?
Given the clear arbitrariness of these changes, it seems that given high migration costs of business deployments and that file storage is central to almost all businesses, it is EXTREMELY difficult for me to recommend Microsoft as the stable service provider.
My argument for O365 has been that training costs on the office suite is comparatively low as everyone knows Office. However, there are two key services that would trump the Office suite that are critical to businesses–email and document storage. Can you please clarify why you are making these changes?
Onedrive Team:
The number of comments should be evidence enough that this was/is a controversial topic. The manner in which it was executed was beyond poor – not only do you use a strong-arm approach to the community, you give excuses stating it was because people “abused” the “unlimited” offering that you put forth last year stating that limits were a “thing of the past”.
Did you really think we’d forget this or not see through the decision? There are many things you can do from a technical aspect to solve these problems, but instead of coming out with the obvious “we can’t be profitable with OneDrive”, you decide to lie to the community.
As an early adopter, generally companies grandfather in people to show some type of respect for the people that have helped made the platform a success. It’s not Microsoft that’s made OneDrive the best/successful (it’s gone backwards with Windows 10), it’s the consumer. I have made recommendations to my customers, to my friends, and to my family to use this offering because of what was provided.
Now that you’ve made an action like this – how am I to trust you with any other type of service? You do know that your credibility (at least with me) is now at a point where I will _never_ want to store any of my digital assets on OneDrive (even if I pay) because you don’t think before you react. If it was wrong to introduce unlimited storage, then give us the real reason why instead of “a couple of users”.
I was actually starting to believe in the vision that the team had started…now I’m just disappointed to be even a part of it because I have, in turn, let down others through my recommendations. Not that you care – obviously you’ll just weather this out and let everyone rage and say that we were all stupid for even caring about a service that had potential.
I would encourage OneDrive Program Managers and leaders that were opposed to this change to vocalize it – hiding behind the team for a wrong decision or inarticulate decision is a horrible thing – get what you need from the community to fix this and save the momentum before you fully destroy this service.
And if all of you felt it was the right decision…ciao – I’ll find an alternative that doesn’t use bait and switch tactics to get users on their platform…
– Scott
Seriously? I know this has been said a million times so far in the comments… but what in the world is going on here? I don’t use a ton of space, but having my storage cut from 40GB to 5GB is garbage. Loyalty to this brand means nothing apparently. I’m due for a phone upgrade and have been patiently waiting for Microsoft to get the new Lumias out, but now I’m officially researching android devices. Losing the ability to back up my camera roll to the cloud automatically without worrying about storage capacity was a major benefit of my Windows phone (and yes, for just backing up photos, i fully considered that 40BG as being at the “no need to worry about capacity”-level). Yet another benefit of the platform that Microsoft has removed.
And ironic that Microsoft has has also decided to rescind their “loyalty” bonus…. clearly they don’t value that loyalty, so i shouldn’t bother pretending that they care if i hang around.
Weak Microsoft, weak.
This is by far one of the worst product decisions I have seen to date. As you move to a cloud first model, you kill your entire cloud service. Amazing. To top it off, the only upgrade option is for 50GB? I mean, really?!? I was on the fence about getting a new Lumia and this solidified my decision to not get one.
due to this
“If you are still over quota after that time, your account will be locked. That means that you will not be able to access the content in your OneDrive until you take action.”
By mistake, 5GB might be accident over quote. That will cause OneDrive acount locked. There is many cause due to other apps. or drag and drop.
The best option is the OneDrive driver should be remove and let user option the freedom to install OneDrive.
The reasons are,
1) ONeDrive is not the only option to have virtual drive. at east there is option to select Google,
2) OneDrive 5GB for camera is also not worth it so it is not worth it to have it install in Windows 8 and 10. Flickr has 1TB to overcome that. That is an opportunity to change my phone.
3) For professional camera user, OneDrive sync local and online. The photos are very important to have them in both place. Fans of Lumia phones are best in camera not in apps. Fans have been taking photos more than years and have more than at least 5GB. That will upset Lumia fans.
4) your 15GB OneDrive focus WAS for Lumia phone and won’t get that if you don’t have the phone. Your quote is
“a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings. In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average. Instead of focusing on extreme backup scenarios,”
Each DVR exceed 5 to 5.8GB each. It won’t make sense to own a Lumia phone just for for 3 VCR. The only thing that make sense a person would prefer to have one account and put years of photos in that account.
All videos recorded with Lumia phone might be temporary there for backup and then download for editing and it is better backup into Pen drive and broadcast over youtube.
I do not mind you change your plan of unlimited OneDrive for Office 365 which is too much. But for 15GB, it does not make sense to buy an unlocked (Asian does not like to subscribe or “contract”) or subscribe service for a phone just to upload VCR or unreasonable storing massive space.
If OneDrive team does not have really think a minute for Lumia future as the truth is Lumia 950 is the last phone please let me know. That would be better I better plan to get an iPhone, Android Phone(at lease Goggle drive), isn’t it?
Please make sure you decide well and support Lumia phone fans.
If you are going to limit everybody, please make the change less drastic for us free users. Also, if customer area really abusing the system, you’re probably Rewarding them! Your not really punishing them.
It’s highly possible they were the competition, just wanting you to back down so they could get customers to there places. And what you’re doing, might just be getting them what they wanted.
Please don’t make such a drastic change.
This is a terrible, seemingly rash decision; I’m curious who at upper management had to approve this so that we can get their perspective on why this was the best solution the team could come up with, given the combined talent of the team members……crummy news.
The MBA-type who thought up this idea should be fired (even if it’s you, Satya). I used to recommend OneDrive to clients and friends, Now I can’t. Even if for some reason Microsoft reverses this awful decision, how can we trust them with our data anymore? The real sad thing is that I’m deep in the MIcrosoft ecosystem, getting loyalty bonuses to OneDrive along the way. A terrible way to treat your loyal customers.
*********
*********
Dear MSFT, you are ridiculous!!!
5GB free storage is a joke. It is just a month of backed up pictures from your proclaimed Lumia phones.
Microsoft, are you really for services and devices company?
Well, I have experienced terrible reliability with OneDrive (constant syncing issues, losing data, etc), so discouraging use of OneDrive is a good idea!
Seriously, though. Removing UNLIMITED storage is reasonable enough. But it should be coupled with an increase to paid users. Like Office 365 subscribers now get 2 TB.
I wonder if the real problem is that Microsoft is having trouble with the technology and finding they just cannot support that much data.
I think it’s a really stupid decision. I’m telling my friends and acquaintances of the advantages of the up to 30 GB free storage and now I hear from this decision. How to get to such an idea, so you can even chase away customers.
so because of a couple of abusers your punishing all of your users ? wouldnt setting a new cap at lets say 5TB solve the abusers problem and let everyone else continue there work ?
Gratuluji Microsofte! Skvělý krok zpět. S 5 GB Vaše uložiště One Drive pro mě ztrácí smysl. Pouze jste tímto krokem podpořily moje rozhodnutí přejít z Windows Phone na Android.
– Hey, we have a couple of guys with 75TB of **** on the unlimited storage we promised. Should we close those accounts?
– Nah. Let’s better just axe all customers. Is funnier that way. I love the shound of ****** off loyal customers.
First it was 5 GB, then 15 GB, now back to 5 GB. Pitiful. 15 GB is not very much storage. I understand the end to unlimited because no storage system can be “unlimited”. Will drive users to other vendors who then get to sell more services to them and MS will lose current and future customers, and not just in the cloud. Other cloud storage providers also provide operating systems and devices. Again, Microsoft doesn’t understand its customer base which is struggling to find reasons to stay with them.
https://www.dropbox.com/plans?trigger=wahexp
I always said to my friends: Use Skydrive/Onedrive. It has more space than the others and a better interface.
Not anymore
Bankruptcy in progress ???
So MS you enticed me to buy a Windows Phone with the free 15GB for Photos and now you are telling me that you will delete my prized photos if I don’t buy Office or put them somewhere else. I think this is illegal no, blackmail even ? I hope someone starts a class action law suit against you.
Wow. I’m really saddened to hear of this news, as OneDrive was the backbone of my photography business workflow. I subscribed to Office 365 specifically to get the unlimited OneDrive space, and indeed, I actively use over 1TB of space to juggle my photography catalog and albums for clients.
I suspect I’ll need to find another cloud solution now.
Sad! Very, very sad!
Finally moved all my stuff to a paid OneDrive account – now I can move it back to Dropbox :-/
@onedrive, you guys are idiots. I understand capping the unlimited option, but reducing 15G to 5G is going to alienate a huge chunk of your current subscribers. And you cannot afford to lose us right now. You can **** right off. I’ve been loyal for many years, and have been impressed with progress in the last few years, but this, from a “cloud centric” company is totally ridiculous. 1600 photos? Do you even know what people typically use just for photos, let alone documents?
One thing I see from MS’s perspective is they still have to contend with people who will create 5 or 10 1 Tb accounts and that’s a lot of data in itself.
It’s clear MS was lying about ‘unlimited’ or everyone would have had it right now.. not sure the people at MS are making the right decisions though??
*** Microsoft. Ok, I get reducing the storage from unlimited to something more reasonable, I would prefer something like 5TB but if you must make it 1TB at least allow us to purchase an additional TB for a reasonable price.
Changing the free tier from 30GB to 5GB is inexcusable and because of this I will not be recommending OneDrive to any more customers. I have got close to 100 people to start using OneDrive, more then half of them have purchased Office 365 because of this. I will now be recommending Google Drive.
Good job Microsoft, you just ****** yourself.
Phtographers you can use Amazon Cloud Drive: https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home
So, I gather you are just adopting you common policy of giving us something and then taking it back, as you have always done (this is the Microsoft Way, undeniably), but to cut off the feature that makes people actually upgrade to Windows 10 and buy Lumias, that’s a real backstab, not only on us users but on the company as well…
As a computer technician, I had refrained from recommending Android phones and using Ubuntu on PCs beause of the quality and features brought upon the table by the new MS products, but, once again, you disappoint me, and the whole userbase…
2016 will be the rollback year, I guess… Back to Android and Ubuntu.
Lumia users will now also have to rethink the Office+OneNote+OfficeLens combo…
Was a first adopter during mesh… I guess it is time to move on from onedrive and office 365 if they are going to change the rules on a whim.
i’m telling everyone to leave OneDrive, dishonest company
I am incensed by Microsoft’s decision to do this.
They truly could have capped everyone at a reason 10TB limited and be done with it. I truly think they have completely messed up here.
I have been slowly moving my services over to Windows 10 from OSX and to Onedrive. I’ve also been converting my music to WMA Lossless and porting to Onedrive to play via the Groove App (which needs work in my mind!)
I’m now going to have to rethink my strategy.
Angry angry angry. Shocking service from a company that should know better.
There is also one problem. Lumia Phone. Every Lumia phone only has 32GB and you can’t select 64GB, or 128GB. Great game is about 1-2GB. Taking videos is 100-500MB each shoot. Each 5.8MP photos is 2-4MB. If 20MP is 8-11MB. In long term…short term, is that enough? Can I have my phone BEST feature AUTO store it in a 5GB OneDrive? How about phone profile BACKUP? and ONENOTE!!!!!!!!! I DONT KNOW HOW MUCH SPACE IT TOOK!!!!!!
So I must check every day if the OneDrive is running out of space since it is set AUTO? When it is 5.9GB, I guess I must do some “die hard” job!
I have 5.8GB taking photos with Lumia and all videos have been removed since 1012. 15GB is enough for photos another 6 years. Lumia Phone will go serious problem If you have only 5GB!
OneDrove Team must also think of Lumia phone unless Lumia phone is expect to die soon. If so, let me know. Asian and Major Lumia fans country, India, must know too. Be generous, Don’t Let them buy Lumia 950 and do the same like OneDrive. We have to decide to choice iPhone or Android phone.
So some people have unlimited storage plans and Microsoft didn’t like the fact that they had upwards of 75TB’s of storage used? I don’t see the problem. You have unlimited storage, you should have the right to use it how you please.
“Instead of focusing on extreme backup scenarios, we want to remain focused on delivering high-value productivity and collaboration experiences ”
I, and many people, use OneDrive for backing up files and content. I don’t use it for collaborating or productivity. I also use it for my Xbox One with game DVR videos and screenshots, which I use A LOT. Well, looks like I’m going back to Google Drive.
How does people reducing the free storage options fix people abusing unlimited storage? How is 5GB going to be anywhere near enough for backing up camera roll photos and storing music for Groove?
How does reducing the free storage options fix people abusing unlimited storage? How is 5GB going to be anywhere near enough for backing up camera roll photos and storing music for Groove?
Was planning on buying a new Lumia 950XL but after this boneheaded move I’ll shelf those plans.
I was planning to move to a Windows phone, and drop googledrive, since I got 30gb in onedrive. I might have to drop my plan..
Windows, win phones, surface – from now its a piece of junk.
All is said before.
Abandon the “unlimited-thing” is reasonable, killing the 30 GB-free-plan/Camera Bonus is a rediculous decision and unbelievable.
Even Google is offering more free storage and cheaper plans.
Wow, what an awful decision for a “mobile first, cloud first” (yeah, right) company….
This is like collective punishment. Super annoyed by the whole thing!!! Will move on to GoogleDrive.
Is really Microsoft going dumb? I’m really upset because 5 miserable gigabytes are not enough to show the “full potential” of Windows 10. How is that going to me an option now days when you want to back up your camera roll? that’s just STUPID!
Come on Microsoft guys, if you want Windows 10 to succeed don’t punish everyone for the people that “abused” the unlimited space, just remember that Google doesn’t support your platforms so people (like me) will migrate to other platforms where the free space it’s not a joke.
Where to begin. The fact that you are making this change in the first place is bad enough. The fact that you try to blame it on the “pursuit of productivity and collaboration”, or maybe it was that one guy on the unlimited plan who put up 75+ TB…is galling. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that you think users will accept these excuses says very bad things about your attitude and perception of said users.
I’m willing to bet this will result in more revenue from the OneDrive service, which is the goal, of course. After all, most of the people you are making angry are not paying customers. If even a small fraction decide to pay up, that’s more than were paying before. On the other hand, how do you measure the good will destroyed here? You folks knew this would be a very unpopular decision, but have decided you would come out ahead, regardless. I hope you will conclude that was a miscalculation.
Newsflash;: “Unlimited” means just that – no limits on the storage used. If you didn’t intend for people to store 75 TB of data, you obviously didn’t really mean that stuff you said about “storage quotas being a thing of the past”, did you?
That being said, I can understand if that isn’t a scenario you want to support – but then you should not have announced unlimited storage in the first place! Calling something unlimited and then imposing limits when people actually use the service is a scam. I hope you get sued for scamming customers with this. This is a problem of your own making,.
And why this overreaction? I can understand if you impose a 1 TB cap (this is practically unlimited for most people anyway). But why do you have to take it out on all users (including loyal ones who have stuck with your product for years and converted friends and relatives?. What does the base storage allotment of 15 GB have to do with some people using 75 TB? Your excuse doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
And why take away larger paid plans? If people actually want to PAY you for extra storage, why not allow it. Or don’t you want people using the service?
But most of all this is a huge breach of trust. A terrible, terrible breach that can only be repaired by immediately and publically apologizing for this misstep. You need to trust your cloud storage provider – and after this – who can trust you ever again?
**** you, Microsoft. You’re a ******* amatuer. Looks like Azure was just a big ******* sham from a con artist of a company.
This move will go into the books as “how to screw up a company with one policy change.”
Cowards. You wouldn’t even put your name on this entry like you did every other one in this blog. That means you know it is wrong. Shame on you.
Err, ok. Fine, I’ll take my business elsewhere. You have shown yourselves to be untrustworthy, and that is unforgivable.
Honestly, not your finest hour Microsoft.
I’ve been a big fan of the “new” Microsoft. Heck I used Onedrive as Skydrive and when it was LiveMesh.
Penalizing me and countless others for the actions of a few abusive users is a terrible decision. My Lumia Phone is coming to the end of its life. I’ll be migrating to Android or iOS. The ‘One’ Microsoft philosophy has implications. You are alienating many users of your software and hardware.
Microsoft. I just want to echo everyone else’s statement that this is a dumb idea. Do not punish the entire group for a few bad apples. Deal with those users who you say are “abusing” “unlimited” storage. A big draw of me purchasing Office 365 was for unlimited storage. Now I won’t push MS products and services as strongly.
Bill Gates and even Steve Balmer would never have agreed to this idiotic move. This new CEO Satya is not visionary like Bill and showing his bean counter, ruthless self. Penalizing everyone else because of some idiots is not a valid excuse to reduce free to 5GB (almost useless for modern files nowadays that contain a lot of media).
Us nice and good Live users happy and keeping to our 15GB (+loyalty bonus) limits are being penalized down to 5GB?!
This is done in the gamble that people will pay for Office365 or they can go elsewhere like Dropbox, and arguably better deal with Google Drive. Cost of storage gets cheaper – reducing free from 15GB to 5GB is just greed.
Basically Microsoft is saying, “We’ve enough of Onedrive freeloaders. They don’t contribute anything to M$. Squeeze them – they either pay us something or we don’t need their ‘business'”. But then, we bought Windows, Windows devices, and indirectly continue to keep M$ in the corporate world. But Satya is saying – thanks for that initial money – but we want more. No useful freebies. Pay pay pay. You can do it for Apple – you should too for M$ muahahahaha.”.
Time will soon tell if Satya Nadella is what John Sculley is to Apple, and Carly Fiorina to HP – slowly killing (now a more) respected company.
There are many things wrong with this blog post and decision:
– The tone is a perfect example of patronizing marketing **** “in pursuit of productivity and collaboration”. You bet.
– What you are basically saying is: “Because a few of you misbehaved, we punish the whole crowd.” Do you think you are talking to kids?
– You are seriously undermining the trust that customers put in your company. Remember, there are alternatives.
– Frankly, I thought the arrogant attitude of Microsoft was behind us, but some people never seem to learn.
– What most of your customers would have accepted is that a fair-use limit was put, to prevent abuses. But what you are showing is that you are taking a knee-jerk reaction, and guess what it makes you look like?
I don’t know what to think other than you (Microsoft) is getting your butt kicked by Google and Apple in the mobile space, which has finally made me, a loyal Windows Phone user, realize it is time to get an iPhone or Android device. Then, after already botching up OneDrive (temporarily or permanently in Windows 10 – waiting to see how that played out), you screw over not only us loyal Windows users, but loyal Office 365 Home users that have actually tried to put some faith and stock in OneDrive.
Taking away “Unlimited” storage is understandable, but surely you could have set the new limit as 10 TB, maybe 20 TB. 1 TB really isn’t that much and I couldn’t even back up one of my external HDs to that, let alone pictures, documents, etc. that I readily have available on my devices/machines.
This idea of penalizing everyone for a tiny percent of abusers is unfair and ridiculous. It is very much an abuse to your customers and demonstrates Microsoft’s disloyalty to the hilt.
What do you think someone like Paul Thurrott is going to say when he has already openly admitted his problems in using OneDrive due to being unreliable and slow, which I too have had to endure?
You had your chance and you blew it. My data will be leaving OneDrive. In fact, that might be a seriously good reason to say goodbye to Office. Between Google Docs and Libre Office, it isn’t like I really need Office anyway…
And, what is even stranger is that you don’t give people an *option* to pay you to get more than 1 TB storage. If you should feel the need for that, why not provide paid upgrade packages?
And – why should you not be able to buy 1 TB of storage without Office 365. I love Office 365 – but I have the Business version. And OneDrive for Business is simply terrible, so I’d rather use the consumer version. But then I’d have to buy an Office 365 subscription, for which I have no use. The bundling is fine, but please offer it individually as well.
Why don’t you just shot yourself in the foot? It’s ridiculous. I don’t care if someone is abusing unlimited plans. 5GB for free was good maybe 5 years ago, but not anymore. Good bye….
Man… The OneDrive group just pulled the equivalent of a Windows 8.0. Time to take my files to gdrive.
Btw, Internal rumors has it that Azure can’t handle the load thus they need to scale back which makes sense.
Love these blog posts, and how they never address the most glaring problem OneDrive faces right now: the loss of file placeholders. Well played, Jason Moore.
Wow. I could see making all new accounts limited to 5 gigs of storage, but it sure is odd to suddenly cut back on disk space for existing accounts. I am grateful and appreciative of the free space, but still- This is a ****** move.
I would have at least appreciated some honesty here. “It’s just too expensive for us to offer this much free storage because so many people have started using it and we are taking a loss on all the free users. We regret to announce that we will be reducing the amount of free space for all new users going forward.” Perhaps that would have been a more sensible way to announce this rather than allow an inept marketer attempt to “trick” everyone into somehow believing this is in the “pursuit of productivity and collaboration.” It’s certainly no boon to either of those things. Stop trying to blow smoke up our *****.
As a paying Office 365 Customer, I am now forced to cancel and move elsewhere. I was using almost 2TB of cloud storage, which will now be cut to 1TB. Pursuit of productivity and collaboration…..Pursuit of Competitors Cloud Storage. Perhaps Amazon UNLIMITED cloud storage for $59.99 per year will be my new home.
Terrible Move, Cap unlimited to 10TB, (also why are you targeting the low end customers, Microsoft abandoning ship)
Bad move, Microsoft. Just when the things were starting to look promising. So much for the “Cloud first” strategy.
you need to back off. otherwise you will lose many customers. I always recommended onedrive at all. but if you do this thing, you cut the legs alone and no one will use more onedrive. especially since all the ruckus that are raising users. Back off!
Is really Microsoft going dumb? I’m really upset because 5 miserable gigabytes are not enough to show the “full potential” of Windows 10. How is that going to me an option now days when you want to back up your camera roll? that’s just STUPID!
Come on Microsoft guys, if you want Windows 10 to succeed don’t punish everyone for the people that “abused” the unlimited space, just remember that Google doesn’t support your platforms so people (like me) will migrate to other platforms where the free space it’s not a joke.
What about space for music. I store all my music on onedrive to use on my windows phone – much like I did with Google music and my Android phone (before switching)
If 5GB is all we get, then I guess Google and Android market share will probably take back what they’ve recently lost to Microsoft.
I am one of the many users who subscribed to Office 365–for this very reason. I found the value in the unlimited storage to be quite high for the money I shell out yearly. Microsoft heavily encourages users to use OneDrive for EVERYTHING. I uploaded my computer’s Documents/Pictures/Music to OneDrive–for the very purpose of having availability across ALL devices, regardless of where I’m at.
This is a kick in the guts to the very people who use the service as intended, and even champion it to friends and family.
This is clear BAIT AND SWITCH. Whoever made this decision just made Microsoft look as good as Comcast.
I’m cancelling my subscription to Office 365. Satya and Co. can kiss my fat white *** while I take my business elsewhere.
OneDrive team: by now every tech news organization (and some mainstream media) have excoriated you about this. I don’t have much to add, but here are my two cents as a very long-time MSFT shareholder and Windows developer:
– You specifically state that you don’t want to focus “on extreme backup scenarios,” but yet you take the damaging PR step of lowering space for the 99.9% of customers who’ll never need it. Why? Why not just let there be a fringe set of multi-terabyte users while the vast majority of your users won’t even use their FREE 5GB, much less their paid 1TB, and almost certainly nothing above that.
– Will there be ANY benefit to Windows Phone users? It seemed at first that the ~3% of mobile users who are dedicated to Windows Phone would get SOME extra storage. Now it seems to me that even the camera roll benefit that was cross-platform is being reduced…can’t you do anything special with storage to attract/retain Windows Phone users?
The shareholder side of me is grateful for revenue, but not for bad PR, and this is a good example of overweighting at the exact time competitors are pushing their cloud storage/producitivity offerings for enterprise.
Unbelievable. Your marketing campaign runs dry so the blowback hits the consumer? Way to go MS. Is this really the answer that was agreed on in your board meetings? This is the major issue affecting most tech companies these days… brilliant minds working the floor, knuckleheads running the show. You ask your staff to come up with creative answers to the tech world’s biggest tech questions… but when your marketing campaign ends or doesn’t give you the results you were hoping for, the most non-creative answer is the one you go with? Jesus H Christ show some backbone and creativity and maybe you won’t end up in as many of these PR debacles.
I definitely don’t understand the decision to limit free accounts to 5GB; surely the people with free accounts that uploaded all 30GB that were allotted to them should not be the cause of concern here.
VEry bad idea !!! I will cancel my office 365 subscription to store my 5To of data in another place !!!
Bad move. Microsoft had the worst cloud storage client of the big players, but at least its pricing kept it competitive. Seriously, no built-in bandwidth controls? Now, the OneDrive service remains the same but the pricing is equal or inferior to competitors. I bet Mover.io will be getting a lot of new traffic after this announcement.
Are you guys drunk? With the offerings by Amazon and Google this is really a crazy move!
Adios microsoft !
Treating unlimited storage as unlimited isn’t abuse: it’s using your product as it was advertised. If you weren’t able or willing to provide unlimited storage, you never should have advertised it as such. I’m hoping there’s a class action about this, because I would sign up immediately.
“Cloud first”, yeah
Translation:
“Today we are announcing large changes in OneDrive. We found that people were actually using unlimited storage as unlimited storage, and this just isn’t on!
We are using this as an excuse to massively cut down storage for everyone so we can make more money. But you still love us, so you’ll still buy Lumias (our genius marketing team tells us that you will!)
Kind Regards and thank you for all of your money,
M$$$$$$$$$T
Go to **** Micro$oft! Gdrive will solve the problem.
What a stupid thing to do!
Guess I’ll be taking my friends to Hubic….
To paraphrase:
“Some Office 365 subscribers were using the unlimited storage too extreme. Therefore, we are drastically capping the paid service and we are significantly reducing the storage for our free users.”
Um, why not offer a paid solution for the extreme users and leave the free users alone?!?!
This change in OneDrive offerings clearly will not support the roadmap MS has for their for business and consumer products. This decision is equivalent to nothing less then tearing down the freeways and replacing them with residential streets. As a 20 year IT Support professional, I could finally see some of the basic infrastructure coming together that truly supported a very mobile, adaptable, and available end-user platform of products and services. Perhaps a better way to handle this would be to partition OneDrive into modular services. I would fully support a separate service and storage allocation for system backups (for instance it could be tied to a maintenance and support product for the OS) Look, I get the whole concept of people using products for things other than what they were designed for and the technical challenges it creates. (Like storing 50GB’s of .PST files on network storage
MS, please reconsider this short-sighted response to the current abuse issues.
As a windows phone user who likes having his photos backed up, this news makes me sad as it is easy to bump into a 5 GB limit. Why not increase it for customers who use your phone simply because growing that business is what you need to do for long term success?
it’s time to say goodbye…
Andrea
I wonder if someone abuses Microsoft Azure resources and they’ll screw each and every Azure subscriber. If one murderer found in the city, then punish the entire city. For this reason, they are just immature. They don’t have right to be in this online drive business if (a company as big as MS) they can’t handle business announcements and costs associated with it.
This is straight cost cutting on part of Microsoft. They just can’t afford it now and are screwing everyone.
First they screwed Windows Phone music App, version after version. Zune desktop player was the best.
Then they withdraw Nokia music, just out of the blue. Terminate the App. They had a wonderful opportunity to merge Nokia Music with Zune/Groove music but they simply didn’t have business brains to do it.
I convinced so many friends to buy Windows Phone just because of Nokia Music, poof!
Some 1-2 years back they shrunk Onedrive space from 25GB to 7Gb. Then increased again to 15GB. Now again to 5GB. They should be ashamed of themselves. Can’t trust this company from now on, really.
I already have a paid 1TB account with Microsoft but after reading all these policies and comments, I definitely will move to other services.
I just read amazon drive plan and they sound amazing! I’m planning to move to Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive
This is draconian, taking away the storage of existing accounts is absurd!
I just read your OneDrive blog today and are extremely disappointed in the changes you’re making to the free and paid storage options for OneDrive. Once my free 100GB Bing bonus was up I was going to buy one of your paid storage plans as I consider OneDrive a crucial component of backing up my personal files, OneDrive has kept my most important files (Office Lense photos, pictures/vids of my family, and pdf files) with me because I travel quite a bit. I never had to worrying about transferring files between my devices, I just took my Surface RT (which still has the placeholder files I love so much) and connected to the nearest WiFi and everything was there that I needed from both my phone and regular PC. If you want to be taken seriously in the consumer cloud market you need to be in touch with the people using your products. The current offerings that OneDrive has today I feel is in touch with what people want/need. If users are abusing the unlimited storage you should be more reasonable and limit the storage to maybe 5-10TB and offer 1TB increments after that. That would give both consumers and professionals the storage they need and offer a way for people using excessive amounts of storage to pay for it. I currently like the 100GB at 1.99 payment tier and that was the one I was consider to buy, once it changes to 50GB for 1.99 in 2016 I will not be considering it as an option. I will look to your competitors offerings first. Please listen to the feedback of all your valued customers before making decisions like this. Thank you!
Simple calculations:
75TB is equal to 5,000 new Windows Phone users with 15GB of storage. They really need that much (at lease).
Why, WHY to punish everybody??
Nonsense!
This is absolutely ridiculous “benefit the majority of OneDrive users” … this in no way benefits the majority of OneDrive users, I would love an explanation on how reducing my storage to a sixth its original size benefits me.
So MS is planning to change their offer for those that are already using it, also for those who paid money for their lumia with the onedrive bonus…
I WAS planning to purchase a lumia 950 to replace my lumia 720 and to purchase a band 2.
Shame on you for this nonsense, I’m going to buy something else and look for more trustworthy services. Also I won’t ever suggest my friends or family to buy MS products anymore.
seriously ????
yes there are some few numbers of people was using the unlimited cloud of storage in a bad way and replacing this option with a 1 TB of storage make a lot of sense
but what is really weird is the other strange and bad changes
there is no explanation for decreasing the amount of free storage from 15 GB to 5 GB
and why have you increased the prices of your storage plans it’s now more expensive than the Icloud ???
and discounting the 15 GB of camera roll is again very weird and strange
there is no reason makes you punish all your customers just because a few people were using it in a wrong way this isn’t fair
I liked OneDrive because of the free 15 GB of storage with another free 15 GB of storage from Google Drive i’ll have an extra 30 GB of storage that i can use them whenever there is no more enough storage on my computer or my smartphone ” my smartphone is 16 GB of storage ” i can rely on these cloud services to store my favorite files and pictures
but now with these disappointing decisions i’ll from now depend only on Google’s could services
unlike icloud ” which all of its services are using the storage like contacts .notes .e-mails.and photos etc etc “among all of Google services “Google keep.contacts .calendar etc ” only three of them are using the cloud storage ” Google photos .e-mail and the stored files in Google drive ” and because i use the free unlimited high quality option for my Google photos my smartphone photos are stored at the original resolution for free so only the e-mail and the files on Google drive will use the storage
with your new bad decisions and your high price and because the other cloud services are much better and have lower price
you must make sure that people will abandon your bad expensive OneDrive and go for the other cloud services that offers much better experience with lower price
This is what is referred to as “Bait-And-Switch.”
Of course Microsoft can’t support unlimited. But why offer it at the beginning? Oh, yeah.. so they could get everyone to get on board with it, switch from their Macs/other cloud services. Then SWITCH it on them.
The fact that they did this on purpose is very shady. And please don’t tell me they ACTUALLY thought they could handle unlimited storage. This was premeditated and calculated, and honestly was a wise financial move for them probably. Just no integrity.
You have got to be kidding me – seriously – you’re joking right? I’m not amused. Not at all amused since I bought Office 365 Home for my entire family for the unlimited storage. Not at all amused since I have been dragging my family and friends away from Dropbox for years only to lose placeholders and now storage. Not at all amused that I can’t send my photos in high res up to OneDrive now cause that paltry 5GB will vanish in about three weeks. What on earth were you people thinking?
Just want to add my STRONG dissatisfaction to the record.
I am most upset by the change for the current free users, dropping from 15+15GB down to 5GB. That’s an 83% reduction in storage capacity! Why would Microsoft reduce its capacities and plans from ‘industry leading’ to not even remotely competitive with similar services? I don’t buy the “few bad apples ruined it for everyone” excuse. This reeks of luring customers in with offers that (we now realize) were ‘too good to be true’, only to analyze their data, and restructure their offerings to be *just* shy of what the average user consumes, forcing them to either pay up, or head to an alternative service. It’s a classic ‘bait and switch.’
I expected better from Microsoft, who seems to always be trying to regain consumers’ trust after their fall from grace in the 90’s and early 2000’s. I assumed they had learned their lesson and wouldn’t actively make such consumer-unfriendly, damaging missteps again. If anything, I figured they’d work extra hard to always maintain a competitive edge in their offerings. I assumed Satya Nadella himself realized their position when he claimed his goal was to want people to “love” Windows.
One thing people absolutely don’t “love”, is now being charged for something they’ve used for free for years. This move from OneDrive completely shatters the trust I’ve extended to Microsoft’s other products and services over the years. My “free” upgrade to Windows 10 no longer seems so generous as I wait to see what strings will be attached or what features will be moved behind a pay-wall in the future; same with the signs for “free” offers of Office 2016 for university students/faculty strewn around my college town; how long until I’m asked to pay to use the backwards compatibility coming to Xbox One? This OneDrive announcement does substantial damage to Microsoft’s reputation as a whole, not just their cloud services.
I am sure this was not a decision made by the Onedrive team. I feel sorry for these fine programmers who are thrown under the bus by corporate leadership. It is unlikely that the decision will be reversed soon. It is against human nature to acknowledge mistakes. Denial kicks in first.
With corporate PR failures, it takes years before they are being recognized, although there are notable exceptions. It reminds me of the Coca Cola failure 30 years ago, when New Coke was introduced. It took them 3 months to reverse the decision. Now we have New Onedrive, another failure that has the potential of becoming a Wikipedia entry in addition to the Start Button episode.
I hope that Mr. Satya Nadella is presented a summary of these posts and rethinks the new strategy of I assume some upper middle managers. I cannot see this was a decision made at board level. The board must have other priorities than disenfranchising customers.
As with New Coke, New Onedrive doesn’t taste that well. Let’s go back to the old formula. MS, this can and should be handled better.
Such a stupid move!
Why not just go after the abusers and question their excessive storage?
Then again, you’d think a company like Microsoft would have thought before offering UNLIMITED STORAGE! its not like you are new to the game.
IDIOTS!
Satya’s new mantra: “Mobile first, cloud first; bait and switch next!”
You all (Microsoft) just dove on a knife, big-time. How can you claim any credibility or expect any level of trust or loyalty from your customers when you bait-and-switch them?
First off, you just admitted that you know exactly what people are storing, so you raise privacy concerns. You’re already suspect due to your close collaboration with law-enforcement. Another nail in the coffin on that front.
Secondly, you shouldn’t be punishing your ENTIRE USER BASE because a few idiots abused the poorly-defined extents of your system. This is especially damning because you’ve been encouraging users to upload THEIR WHOLE MUSIC COLLECTIONS (mine is over a terabyte) to stream over Groove Music on Windows Phone. You’ve literally crippled another service WHILE eliminating any competitive advantages between you and the rest of the field.
STUPID STUPID STUPID.
Mobile First, Cloud First?
Yea, right.
In one confusing step you have managed to devalue Windows tablets and phones. Maybe you have a grand plan but it looks pretty ugly from where I’m sitting right now. Given how pivotal OneDrive is to be to Windows and Office, I’m frankly astonished at the lack of flair in its design and implementation especially given that Mesh came from the same company.
SkyDrive and OneDrive have been a continual disappointment compared to the Mesh beta. What I, and I suspect many others, value most from OneDrive, DropBox, etc. is the *synchronization* service and not the capacity of the cloud storage on offer.
If you want to shake up this market, and I think it’s in your interests to do so considering that OneDrive supports Windows and Office, then you should go back to the Mesh concept and allow us to synchronize data between devices and choose whether or not to have that data available “on the cloud.” As it stands, the cloud storage capacity not only limits the volume of data that we can share or access via the web but it also limits the volume of synchronized data between our devices. The Mesh had this right in a way that DropBox and the other copycats didn’t.
What a terrible idea Microsoft. And here I was moving back into your ecosystem from Google and you go and remove smart files and now this storage reduction. Are you trying to push us away because that’s exactly what you are doing. Office 365 with Onedrive was a great solution but you keep crippling it with these terrible decisions which appear to be based on short term metrics and not long term ecosystem adoption. If you want to win us back here’s what you need to do:
1. Provide reasonable storage plans. Include 5TB with an Office 365 subscription and then offer an additional TB for $5 / month or something like that. 1TB simply isn’t enough for those of us who want to move all of our data to the cloud.
2. Bring back smart files. These should have never been removed from Windows and I still don’t understand why you would remove your key differentiator compared with other cloud platforms.
3. Bring in people who understand your users, and give all of us who typically like Microsoft some compelling reasons to stay with you vs Google, Apple, DropBox because you have just shortened that list again.
smart files were becoming unsustainable on low storage devices and in scenarios where people had a vast number of files (not simply just storage, but file count). instead of implementing a solution that allowed someone the option to turn it on or off, they just cut it out entirely. i’d be more understanding if they at least provided a OneDrive Windows 10 app or if they re-implemented it as an option to turn it on or off.
Agree that they should have allowed users the option to turn the smart files on or off. Also, regarding the instability, they should have just made incremental improvements to improve that. I understand that performance and stability are difficult to improve, but even with the issues it was still a great feature. Instead of fixing it they threw the baby out with the bathwater.
This is really surprising, I’ve been using OneDrive for the past 5 years or so, and have been amazed by the service, and Microsoft’s dedication to consumer cloud services. Frankly, I was gladly willing to pay for additional space when I hit my 40 gigs of free space. However, reducing that space and forcing people to upgrade to paid plans is just a bad move.
This is so poor!
You can have single files are in Google Drive that are 5 times the maximum storage that Microsoft now offers…
Cutting the free storage… you’ll now lose out to Google… and they don’t have apps on Windows Phone. So now people on Windows Phone will leave for Android. People on Android will have a barrier to switching to Windows Phone.
Thanks for pushing me IPhone/Droid and google drive/Dropbox. You give me no choice as MS phones do not support MicroSD, and we bought them on the promise of OneDrive. Since I now have to replace 4 phones I will not ever be back to this platform again. Music subscription will be cancelled shortly as well. Thanks for breaking the trust and letting me find out you changed my services from a NEWS site.
in Microsoft’s defense of phones, their newer phones coming out do support MicroSD (and they do have other models currently out that do as well). Not that it defends them in this OneDrive scenario, just stating that it’s not true to say their phones don’t support MicroSD. iPhone *definitely* doesn’t support microSD, however, there are Android phones that do.
This decision is idiotic beyond belief, and also proof that OneDrive for consumers will be killed off completely in a not too distant future. We were promised that placeholders would return to the Win10 client, which they haven’t and I dare say never will.
Who will ever trust you again? I have already made a fool of myself for recommending WP phones to friends and family, and now I will have to suffer for having moved people to OneDrive. You ARE aware that you are eroding your most loyal user base this way, right?
Summary: Some people are using more than 1TB, so we’re going to reduce the free storage amount from 30GB to 5GB.
Yes, that’s right, those two facts do indeed appear to be completely unrelated. Someone thinks we’re all idiots. Well handled, Microsoft. Rather than an integrated OneDrive solution for Windows and genuinely useful cross-platform content we’re instead being tempted away by cheaper alternatives from Microsoft’s competitors. How can it cost less to use iCloud on Windows than OneDrive. Heads should roll for this idiocy.
Extremely stupid move. Surely you know that by now? If you were concerned about your reputation is this market, don’t worry about it anymore – nobody is ever going to trust a Microsoft cloud storage solution ever again after this fiasco.
It’s a foolish move. Microsoft allowed to move Music to OneDrive to have it accessible directly in Groove. It allowed to have auto backup from camera.
I did both, and I easily stored 10gb for free.
It was great and it was easy.
And now… only 5 gb remains???
I have to move from OneDrive, searching for alternatives.
I planned to switch from Android to Lumia next year, but in this scenario I will stay in Android for sure.
Bad bad move.
Not a stopper to continue use my 1TB*5 Office 365 Home Premium, but definitely stopper to recommend the service to anyone. Google Drive is now definitely better offer.
And I cannot understand how so named “abuse” of some paid users (they paid for “unlimited” drive space, didn’t they?) relate to quotas of free service and plans for 100/200GB. Maybe you better say you did not make money from the service, and hope users ready to pay for not to move data to other Cloud Storage provider? I afraid some bad news for you here – users do not want to pay someone who break trust.
I don’t think I can recommend this service anymore. The free offerings elsewhere are more beneficial as a starting point. I can’t sell someone a service that’s free elsewhere.
So you back-pedal on the storage, basically admitting it was all a marketing gag and a lie.
Then you call out a user for the amount of storage he/she was using.
Then you announce what said user was backing up.
Way to violate customer trust, privacy, your own EULA, etc, etc…
Glad I moved all my hardware to Linux.
My windows phone, and surface (2 of them) backups take more than 5 gigs.
huh?
This is one of many stupid decisions.
Have to add my frustration to the legion of equally annoyed users. To the ones who made this decision, probably for financial reasons: if you negatively change one portion of MS’ offerings, you affect all of it. *All* of MSFT gets dumped on. Why would users believe the ‘new’ MS, trying to provide services anywhere? Why buy a Windows Phone and auto save photos to OneDrive? Why buy a Windows 10 machine and default save to OneDrive? Why use Office365? The MS ecosystem needs less schizophrenic decisions than this, if you want to retain or attract users.
Using advertised space does NOT equal abuse. I was planning on using the space to back up raw photo files. This was the only reason i was keeping my subscription to Office 365. I guess i’m leaving and moving solely open source solutions.
So much for the OneDrive “Loyalty Bonus”, for sticking with Microsoft.
Who’s going to go “Mobile first, cloud first” with Microsoft, on 5GB?
The person responsible for this decision should be fired. PERIOD! Trust in Microsoft has been eroded.
Was going to buy the XBOX One Elite Console today. I have changed my mind for now. Using OneDrive on my XBOX for my photos was a plus which is now a minus and instead will use something like Plex. Looking at a NAS solution now where I can store my camera roll an more. Personal cloud here I come, as MS’s Cloud first is now Cloud last.
What did this cost you (Microsoft) today from me? XBOX One Elite Console, Lumia 950XL not being ordered.
It’s the classic bait and switch. Every big company has done this and it has been done for years. They hook you and then switch the plan. Television service comes to mind…I remember in the 70’s when you would be asked to “please allow a word from our sponsor” and then a 30 second commercial would play. This would happen maybe once more so you had 29 minutes of programming in a 30 minute spot. Now, you are lucky if you get 20 minutes of programming in a 30 minute slot. With technology, “don’t rely on what you know today it might be applicable tomorrow”. I guess the same is true for storage. My goodness, change your service if you are happy currently. But, please stop the whining. The whole lot of you here sound like a bunch of ****** off teenagers not getting your way.
Tweet or email Satya Nadella and ask him why Microsoft insists it can go mobile first, when it can’t provide the foundation for mobile or cloud
Extremely disappointing. This really undermines customer trust of Microsoft’s word on our cloud offering.
This is a complete betrayal of customers. Why should anyone trust any product Microsoft offers in the future? They essentially lied to build up hype around their product.
I just glanced over a fair amount of the comments. It doesn’t surprise me that Microsoft is putting a limit on how much storage you now get (unless you pay more). What’s more chilling is that they outed the nature of the content. That is more chilling to me than their return to reality that they can’t offer unlimited service.
They are more or less saying… Hey look we can see what you are storing on our digital platform and we do in fact look at your files.
This is why I will no longer be using OneDrive to store my digital content without first fully encrypting it.
Disgusting.
I take it the person that decided to make these changes simply gave the go ahead to make this post and then told everyone to not reply to your users.
This is a very bad news for all user and OneDrive will become much less attractive compared to competing services…
We are witnessing OneDrive commiting Cloud-icide
This changes don’t have a good side! Your reputation will be ruined, your costumers will flee, your competitors will have better options! It’s an idiotic decision! Ban the stupid using 75TB! Why everyone else have to pay?! Why you cut free storage?! Why you cut your storage options?! Heck, now iCloud is better than OneDrive, and nothing is worse than iCloud. To anyone that make this decision: Regret, before you lose everything!
Is this just the beginning of the return of the old stupid and arrogant Microsoft marketing mentality? It sure as heck is inconsistent with the way Nadella seemed to be changing the place. Maybe it is caused by a delayed provision in Ballmer’s separation agreement that is only now kicking in? It reeks of the old way, that’s for sure.
Microsoft,
The biggest problem here is not changing some things, the problem is that you are changing things for people that ALREADY and PAID for that. You are, of course protected by the agreement I had to accept, but as a costumer the only thing I am thinking right now is: MICROSOFT HAS LEARNED WITH THE F**KING BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT.
I explain: first, look at something that will make a HUGE boom and will make people talk about you (unlimited storage), submit to the marketing department then ask the engineers if at that specific moment you can do that but never ask about future and do not make any studies about future viability, after some time and some propaganda, realise you made a HUGE mistake and then change everything so things are good to you again, find a very small problem (75TB backups) and then make it as the main excuse (instead of pure bad planning – because I refuse to believe the downgrade was planned during the upgrade, if that happened, please, let me know).
Anyway, I was going from Mac OS to Windows, from iPhone to Windows Phone and…well, for the moment I will not complete my computer OS change who knows if tomorrow you will see that the free Windows 10 upgrade was a bad ideia and then will make people pay or downgrade back (because you know, people use Windows to download ilegal content and store DVR data also, computers are not all about Office and content creation anymore).
You love to say Google sells our data and bla bla bla, but look, we have another company that can’t be taken serious!
Oh, I forgot to mention: if you start charging old costumers for Windows 10, probably a lot of people WILL pay because it is Windows, but OneDrive? Well…there are a lot of options to choose.
This is going to be the funeral for Microsoft.
Como se pode abusar de algo ilimitado ¿¿¿¿¿???? Desapontado! Frustado! Me sentindo enganado!
Vou para o Google Drive, armazenamento ilimitado para Fotos e sem enganação!
————
How can abuse something unlimited ¿¿¿¿¿???? Disappointed! Frustrated! Feeling cheated!
I go to Google Drive, unlimited storage for photos and no deception!
Extremely poor business decision. Not reneging on a deal that encouraged integration with multiple services is a no-brainer – if Microsoft wants to build it’s business around “cloud-first, mobile first”, then it needs to encourage consumption of their cloud services. The base 15 GB was only par with other free providers; putting your offering at lower than the competition takes you out of the market.
The simplest solution would have been to strike up a small team to go after the abusers and update the Terms Of Use to restrict usage for users over a certain percentile larger than the average account, rather than kill service levels. The team could be easily funded by the revenue generated from legitimate users. Or, price overage usage based on that same scaled system. (ie. users with more than 10 times the average will be charged x USD per TB).
Personally, this means I’ve lost faith in the product and much of what I use OneDrive for, I’ll no longer use. As I write, I’m downloading my content and will discontinue service.
Professionally, being an IT decision-maker in a medium-sized organization, the potential project we had with O365 will be put under intense scrutiny prior to making a decision. Let’s just say you may have just lost fifteen thousand licensees.
Dear Microsoft, what have you done with this announcement? I was your loyal customer, but now I am not anymore.
If anyone wish to migrate to Dropbox, please use this link to register at Dropbox and both of us will win an extra 500MB: https://db.tt/ifBIrUOK
Thank you and God bless you!
As a recent WP owner and a meager 16GB pictures folder onedrive user, i cannot even believe that **** i’m reading is true. Making 99.99% users to pay for abuse of a malicious/innovative few is immoral.
Why would i put my faith into MS while google is doing adequate job is again beyond me.
Are you serious, Microsoft? Sounds like a bad joke to me… As if there´s no competition – i don´t care about unlimited storage (in my opinion, it´s to slow anyway) – but cutting the existing storage is a no-go!
I´m just using 19GB which seems to be pretty low, when i read through the comments. As a Surface Pro 3, Lumia and Xbox One owner i feel pretty disappointed about this. Or let´s say it´s making me pretty angry.
Hopefully you´ll get a nice ********* for this…
First time I am thinking about go away from Windows Phone..
IMPORTANT
MEETING IN
IMPORTANT
BUILDING
FTW.
You decide to cancel the unlimited offering because people are using it???? REALLY??
I have to imagine that if you’re able to identify those individuals that are causing issues & even define what file types they are saving (which shows you already violated trust/privacy issues), you should be able to work with those few on an individual basis and/or pull a cellular provider tactic & throttle their speed….
I really don’t understand the logic behind this…. or the lack thereof.
As someone who is only using 7GB of my 240GB of currently available OneDrive storage, I still think that 1TB for someone paying for an annual subscription is too low. People carry more than half of that around in their pockets these days. Would Microsoft like me to donate some hard drives?
I have a hard time justifying paying for Office 365 personal.
-I get free storage with OneDrive.
-I get free “Office” with OfficeOnline / OneDrive.
-I get free email with Outlook.com.
-I get free video chat with Skype.
-I get free online gaming with Xbox Live.
I have been waiting for Microsoft to “sweeten the deal” with Microsoft Subscriptions. But I thought I would lose functionality, like the ability to edit Word and Excel documents using the OneDrive web interface unless I was an Office 365 subscriber, or offer a dedicated Skype phone number (“Transfer your Google Voice number!” promotion?) to Microsoft Subscription buyers. Limit the size of my mailbox in Outlook.com.
But no, instead, they simply impose archaic (by internet timeline standards) storage limits.
Although I’m relatively unaffected, I’m genuinely disappointed.
If my comment comes up for discussion in future meetings among the OneDrive Team, I’d be glad to comment further & focus group future enhancements.
I will point out that I did pay for a Groove Music (Xbox Music) subscription when it was a Pi-Day discount back in March, and I do pay for Xbox Live Gold (and have since I first bought my 360 in 2006), but as I said… I want a “sweeter deal” when it comes to Microsoft’s “total package” subscription. I’m just not seeing the value.
Yes. I made it to the end of the site. 😀
I like the decision from Microsoft. Makes it easier for people to switch to other Cloud-Services.
I think you may just have pushed me off your platform. I was looking forward to the Surface Pro4 and Gobsmacked by the Surface Book (which I desperately wanted) but this, this is making me think twice about investing anymore of my money in anything MS. I questioned why anyone would want to have Office 365, then used it and was hooked. After using SharePoint 365 I encouraged a friend to use it, ‘you can do your website in it’ I told him, shortly after he did indeed ‘do his website’ you removed that functionality for it. I then sold my job into going with Office 365, ‘You get a terabyte of storage space’ I said, then when it became unlimited, I pushed again. ‘You’ll never need to worry’ I said, now with this ****, I once again look the chump. I’ve been with Onedrive since the beginning and so have the ‘loyalty’ bonus, I purchased 100 gig shortly after it was available as a safeguard for my machine, using it as a My Documents folder. I rarely use more than 40 gigs but having that safety net was important to me, now there is no more safety net. Whatever you have left us with after this idiotic change, I’ll never be able to trust you again with whatever it is you offer. Where will I go? I don’t like Linux and am uncomfortable with the Apple hype. Disappointed doesn’t remotely cover it.
Yours an ex-customer.
ALL about the moves
I dress myself.
Hey, Microsoft!
Think what you’re doing!!!?? It was a AD campaign that your Lumia devices, without SD storage support, is about to use OneDrive to store your data, like music, photos, and videos, btw.
You’re shrinking everything to 5 Gb because of some ’75 Tb’ jerks?
What about “bring you friend and get 500 Mb campaign”? You used us just to level up the client base but betrayed after. Who you are after this?
“MS is suxx” time comes again…
Thanks a lot Microsoft for making me waste my time with OneDrive/SkyDrive.
Whomever made this decision needs to take a “How not to anger your customer base by making penny wise pound foolish” class.
Really Microsoft? One day this move might rank up there with New Coke and Kodak ignoring digital cameras in the annals of bad business decisions.
Please support my idea!!
#OneDrive
https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/10535532-fire-the-onedrive-marketing-team
#MVPSummit #MVPBuzz #o365 #office365 #Microsoft #yammer
+1
How did Microsoft discover what content was in the accounts using large amounts of storage?
Is Microsoft allowed per their privacy policy to poke around in customer’s accounts without reason? Or did they get permission from the customers?
You guys are using the same dictionary as AT&T when you look up “unlimited” apparently?
This stinks of “bait-and-switch”
First step should be to fire the entire PR department and start over.
Was planning to replace my Lumia 920 with a newer Lumia. Camera Roll bonus was one big bonus. *** am i going to do with this lousy 5GBs for my pictures.
Lumia will now not be my first choice..
Good job, Microsoft, good job..
Why you make so hard to tell the others about your services, Microsoft? I’m an Office 365 suscriber, but the people who just want to use their phones and send their photos to the cloud was punched in their faces. I can’t indicate your services or phones anymore (and I have a Lumia 830).
Sad!
Thanks Microsoft, just consolidated everything on my one drive personal account.
I am a one drive business user and though ok, I’ll just move everything over there now, but wait, I can’t because you don’t have a business Sync client for Mac Yet!!
And beta does not count….
Better get that client finished before you cut of the storage on the Personal side.
For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.
I don’t understand those who talk about abuse. Microsoft themselves do not use that word. They sold unlimited storage and some people took advantage of it. It doesn’t matter whether they uploaded 5 To, 75 TO or 500 To. They didn’t abuse anything. They just used what they payed for. They are not the jerks. Microsoft are the jerks for changing the rules.
Microsoft used dumping prices to attract customers. And now that they have customers stuck to their cloud, they try to make more money out if it. It’s as easy as that.
You teach me now how cruel you’ve been – cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, OneDrive users? I have not one word of comfort.
You deserve this. You have killed yourself.
Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they’ll blight you – they’ll **** you. You loved me – what right had you to leave me? What right – answer me – for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart – you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong.
Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you – Oh, God! would you like to lie with your soul in the grave?
Hey people of the internet: Yes, this is a ****** move. Yes, Microsoft is the master pf PR bull. Yes, you got screwed with your Office 365.
But MSFT knew all this would happen. This is planned, not the f*** up moved of a stupid manager, which they still have plenty. Look at this post – No Name signing it. Not like the other ones, which have a real name on them. MSFT knew this would blow big time. They were ready.
The question is, what will you do. MSFT is counting you will forget and keep sending them money. Will you? They are sure you will but a Surface, and Office 365, and Xbox, and all that. Will you?
Yes you will, And they know it. That’s why they screw you. Because you let them.
To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal. #Surface #Google
Great move – another step towards your “cloud first/mobile first” vision.
We’ve realized your mobile first vision translates to “ios/android first, w10m/wp “soon”. So the cloud first vision seems to be “dropbox/icloud/amazon drive/gdrive first, and OneDrive “soon”… Perhaps with Nov update for Windows 10, you’ll include out-of-box integration with iCloud/gdrive instead of onedrive? Nice, very nice.
I asked the MS Sales guy and Technical Lead who are working on a 12,000 seat O360 E4 proposal for our company about this, at our breakfast meeting this morning. In passing – not to buttonhole them.
Both blindsided by announcement. Their phones had been dinging since 5am. Not good a day to be facing your clients. Add unhappy employees to unhappy customers.
Reneging on an Unlimited offer – in this fashion – was colossally bad decision. Surely a better option was considered? It brings in to question the decision making process.
When I have to decide on moving the aforementioned seats to O360E, this blatant take it or leave it adds another risk factor to the decision, and to the long term sustainability of the relationship.
I enjoy the free services I get for personal use, and are well below the limits now, and after the change too.
I can move services quite easily and MS knows that. No biggie.
I can’t move – or re-architect – 12,000 seats that easily. That is a big deal MS. Trust has been questioned.
tags: abused, add, adhd, adversity, anger, anxiety, arguments, attitude, bad-experiences, beaten, belief-system, betrayal, bias, bipolar, bonds, borderline-personality-disorder, google, brainwashed, broken-families, cages, chains, childhood, choices, comfort-zone, conflict, death-of-child, distancing, drugged, false-belief-system, family, fear, freedom, held-captive, highly-sensitive-people, home-life, hurt, insecurity, lied-to, life-experiences, lost-children, low-self-esteem, mental-disorders, mental-health, negativity, obstacles, opening-up, overthinking, pain, dropbox, perception, perspective, prisoner, protection, raised, raised-by-wolves, reading-into-things, rearing, resentment, self-abuse, self-imposed-pain, self-protection, self-worth, sensitive, sensitiveness, sexual-abuse, silence, speculation, stigma, taking-things-personally, the-past, uncaring, upbringing, walls
This company and trashed it. Close doors!
The most absurd decision from Microsoft. And the reasons behind it are also very lame. I am glad that I switched to Google Drive a long time ago and never looked back, now you proved that my move was right.
I. AM. SO. *******. ******!
Hmmm… Do you have fun with people? What is your purpose? I need to delete my account now!!
Well…good bye, OneDrive
Why ahhhhhhhh! Just gives us 2 tb
Removing the bonus for cameras and the higher free amount is a mistake. Neither of those are abusive amounts, but they are a great incentive to even start with the service as opposed to the competition.
I have to congratulate the author of this post – the title “OneDrive storage plans change in pursuit of productivity and collaboration” is very similar to Mint.com’s post describing discontinuation of Mint.com app for windows – how it will help the users “get event more out of mint.com”.
I’m excited by how the reduced space will improve my “productivity and collaboration”, while helping microsoft be more innovative… yay!
Exactly – well spoken. Such a spin doctored headline but even then it reeks of insincerity
Reducing my storage from 30GB to 5GB because some guy used 75TBs? You guys are a joke. Why not solve that problem and not screw the little guy? I am a Windows Phone (Lumia 1020) and SP3 owner and enjoyed the perk of being loyal to your company. Obviously you do feel the same way about me as a customer.
This is a poorly articulated and poorly conceived change. Microsoft is going to be icing this black eye for awhile.
This makes a lot of sense, everyone knows that Microsoft’s products in the cloud have a much higher overhead than AWS (cloud drive, dropbox), Google, or Apple, because they use Windows instead of Linux. They can’t afford to offer unlimited storage even if it’s only a “small number” of people using large amounts of storage, Microsoft/Azure simply costs too much to run compared to the competition.
I think that it’s necessary to understand some things…
Firstly, my perspective is that it was not a Microsoft decision, I don’t think that whole company was according with this. I think that it’s a bad decision too.
Secondly, I love using Windows and Office on my desktop and it is a very powerful combination to do a lot of thing on my work, I use Visual Studio too, and a lot of Microsoft’s software. But it’s a common users’ mistake (you can read a LOT of comments up there) to generalize assuming that the company could die because this decision. It’s not good to be so dramatic. Their services and products are so good, but there are people working behind it, and teams taking decisions, so please no generalize. We should say bad for One Drive, I’ll migrate to another service (I actually will do this) like GDrive or Dropbox.
If there’s a final decision to apply all posted here well, someone will create a desktop application or an Universal App to use Windows with other storage providers. Please be conscious.
Please vote here to avoid this change: https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/10524099-give-us-back-our-storage
This post is great example of “How to not communicate with customers”
Bad move. I just got a lot of my university friends to use onedrive instead of dropbox or gdrive, due to the better storage plans. This argument is obsolete now.
Well, I don’t support the idea of offering something and then taking it away. But…
If these changes will make OneDrive more stable, faster, and more secure for the 99% of users, I’d have to say I support this pragmatic shift.
Why do Microsoft and some users here keep saying someone was abusing the services ..that never happend.
If you offer Unlimited storage and some one pays to get this and then actually uses it .. how is that abuse?
The only ones abusing something here is Microsoft..they are abusing their customers with this change
They already made OneDrive almost useless in Windows 10 ..and made the OneDrive app in Windows Phone, and Windows 10 mobile quite horrible .. now they continue and drag down Office 365 as well
I, an many else, bought a Office 365 subscription to get Unlimited storage in OneDrive..
That was the selling point…..buy Office 365 and get Unlimited storage …turns out this was a lie ..
One of the sales arguments for Windows Phone from the start was 20GB storage in SkyDrive, then that turned out to be untrue and they changed it to 7GB …..but to compensate we who got a Windows Phone 7 while the statement about 20GB got 25GB as compensation .. that transfered to OneDrive when the name changed.. Then it was changed to 15GB free storage for OneDrive, but i could keep my 25GB .. as Microsoft already basically lied to me once..
Then they touted Unlimited storage with Office 365, so I bought that.. ..and now i get 1TB ?? and if i drop Office 365, and i probably will…but who can trust Microsoft anymore .. I get 5GB???
It is a complete *** move by Microsoft…. and even the reason they claim they do it is a lie.. there was no abuse..there was just use … using 75TB is no where near the size of Unlimited..
What is the sales pitch for Office 365 now … well you get 1TB storage ..for now …maybe later we will remove it ..we probably will..
and what is the sales pitch for Windows 10 mobile now … a PC in your pocket ..that really can’t run any PC applications, since it is arm .. and well lets hope you don’t take a lot of pictures with the 20MP camera..
Seems Microsoft fired the last persons with half a brain in the company in the latest layoffs ….and things where actually looking up… and then they pull a thing like this …
If you are trying to get out of the Personal cloud storage business, and kill off OneDrive..just say so .. you sure are doing a good job killing it lately..
Yeah Its good move, thanks Microsoft. Lets start moving stuff to GDrive/Dropbox.
Let me get this right.
I own a Nokia Lumia Windows Phone, a Dell Tablet running Windows 10, a Xbox 360, and recently threw down $1500 on a Surface Pro 3. All the devices are linked in the MS Account, and doesn’t even account for the 2 other original Xboxes and 2 other Windows machines running Windows 7 and Vista. Microsoft has given me 15gb of free storage plus another 15gb bonus for a total of 30gb on OneDrive. Now they want to reduce that to 5gb because of, well, since the PR statement is so bad, I would have to say its just a switch strategy. Now, if I go buy a Google or Apple product, or even have Linux, I get the same 5gb free account even though I own all these devices and they even can easily tell I own the devices. I hate to break it to Microsoft, but this is a bad way to do business in 2015. People have just started to invest back into your eco-system and you do this? This is more like Microsoft in 1996.
For the record, I don’t really use OneDrive much, usually have much less than 1gb used, as we have learned in the past not to trust these companies, especially with data, we have home NAS. But with that said, if the management at Microsoft doesn’t see how this can cripple their image even further, well, enjoy your recent small stock rise while it lasts.
This is more on the scale of the Xbox One fiasco, in my opinion. Even though, I am not really using OneDrive much, its still kind of a slap in the face of the heavy consumer.
Me too. I’m on my third Nokia phone, windows tablet, encourage my coworkers to buy surfaces. I have 30 GB of Onedrive (I’m using half of it right now) and feel like I “paid” for it when I purchased these Microsoft products. I should have known they’d take it away like they killed Windows Media Center.
Get a clue Microsoft. Take care of your customer and they will take care of you. Screw them over and you’ll loose a customer for years.
I was going to buy a copy of Office 2016 (purchase product), which was the first time I have purchased Office in like over 10 years, but I think that is off the list now. And I don’t even use OneDrive much, very silly of them to destroy some of the image improvements they had been working on.
Xbox One mentality all over again, abuse your customers strategy. What is funny is PC sales continue to decline, a general consumer has less and less reason to buy from them without some stunt like this. All aboard the insane train.
Glad we never trusted these companies, NAS all the way.
For Windows Phone users there is are not many alternative to onedrive for storing photos (for free).
Maybe copy.com seems to be somewhat an alternative, as they have a Windows Phone App and offer 15GB free storage. You get 5GB additionally, when you sign up via a referral link.
Not sure if their WP app automatically syncs your photos to the cloud. Their android app does it.
Here is the link, if you want to try 20GB for free: https://copy.com?r=AjeQRi
First you screwed us with Smart files in OneDrive and now this. And you also made a mess of all of your new products, Windows 10, Office 2013-2016, Skype for business. They are all so unbelievably buggy. Everyone was hating on Ballmer, but it seems that he was the good guy. Stop spending money on marketing and start doing the right things.
Is this a joke? Tell me you are joking MS. Are you forcing users to switch to Google Drive + Android instead of Windows + OneDrive?
Is there a pilot in the ship?
I’d suggest everyone to calm down – it’s not that Microsoft can’t handle large contents on OneDrive, but they want to convert as many people as possible to pay for the O365, and this is the easiest way for them. Another advantage this gives them is that many people won’t consider new windows 10 phones anymore – making it the best decision ever for the “Cloud first/mobile first’ CEO to kill it, without affecting the stock price.
I don’t blame the developers who have not jumped on the universal windows platform yet – there isn’t much “universal” about Microsoft anymore.
Hey Microsoft, I understand having to address those abusing the unlimited data. However, as a user who uses both a Windows 10 PC and a Windows Phone as a daily driver and using OneDrive daily I would prefer to have my 30GB back rather than be shafted down to 5GB.
Seriously, are y’all at Microsoft even thinking when treating your loyal consumers?
Cloud first, mobile first, not.
Well in my Samsung Note 4 the app is still not working properly and my photos are never uploaded automatically.
It’s months that it doesn’t work….but I am still paying for this service.
Now that my space will be downgraded to 1 TB, from 10 TB, I will go as fast as possbile to dropbox that works perfectly.
I think that this changment on the run, and overall when customers like me has already renewed and PAYED the yearly subscription, will be remembered for years…
I have bought a Microsoft phone in order to be more compliant with onedrive, but tomorrow morning I will send the phone back to the reseller and NEVER and NEVER I will buy any more a product o service from Microsoft.
Here in Italy we say it is an auto goal this kind of beaviour and even if a lot of customers like me will never complain more, thay will apply to different services, product, devices in the nearly future.
So much crying. Why did you trust Microsoft in the first place? There are some many examples from the history, how they first do something, then cut it without warning. You are just reaping the “profits from bad trust”.
Hi OneDrive Team,
I have a question, why do not discontinue the OneDrive service!? Let’s do a short résumé.
First you destroy the OneDrive integration on Windows 10. In my opinion the integration is really useless. No unique feature, like the file pointer was. You do the same like all others do and that even not better.
As second you degrade all subscription plans and this for all users not even for the new ones. One might think, you don’t like your customers.
Can you tell me one good reason to keep my OneDrive account!?
I bought a Lumia phone because of the promise of FREE 15GB onedrive storage. Now that you are going to take away my storage space, I simply cannot trust you anymore.
Thanks for helping me to make the decision to stop using your services. Thank you Microsft. Just turned off Auto back and canceled my sub.
I will stop using my microsoft-conto, soo bye bye onedrive
and my next fone is NOT from microsoft.
I was evaluating Office 365 for my business, however with such a change as this, how can I trust Microsoft with my business when they pull the rug out from under people like this?
All of a sudden I’m not as happy with my Windows Phone as I was a few minutes ago.
So I’ve been using OneDrive since pretty much day 1 (SkyDrive and Live Mesh).
I currently have a total of 160GB of free storage (of which I’m only using 22GB)
15GB
+10GB Loyalty bonus
+15GB Camera roll bonus
+100GB Enthusiast bonus (exp 20/2/16)
+20GB Enthusiast bonus (exp 22/12/15)
So once the changes take effect and my enthusiast bonuses expire I’ll have
5GB
+10GB Loyalty bonus
=15GB TOTAL
Fail Microsoft. Fail.
For those of us who have been with you since the start and use the service legitimately, I big upping for the loyalty bonus would ensure that you don’t **** off too many of your supporters.
OMG. It took you 11 years (since the introduction of Gmail) to actually almost win me back from Goolge completely just to lose my for good. And no, in the end it’s not about those couples of GB you are taking away in such a shameful manner but it’s simply the fact that one can’t trust people who don’t deliver on their promises. You don’t give something to then take it away like this. I was even planning to switch to Windows phone. Yes, mainly because of Onedrive. I wonder how many millions of people share the same story.
Microsoft, this is really a terrible move! I am disappointed in you! I am going to move all my files to Google Drive after this bait and switch scheme!
OMG.
One of the stupidest Microsoft’s decision.
Force people to pay, OK.
Force people to pay for the amont of data they use OK.
But, 1 TB and only 1TB ? Seriously ? in 2015 ? You’re kidding ?
I’m a hobbyist photographer. I need 1,5 TB on the cloud, and I will have no solution with Microsoft !
I’ll have to go to OVH’s Hubic… (the best offer in France)
It’s sad, for a “Mobile First, Cloud First” Company…
Bait and switch.
I have deleted all my photos from OneDrive back to Google completely. Also uninstalled the app with a 1 star rating. Now how to delete the OneDrive account and all retained records completely?
You don’t deserve my business Microsoft. You make a contract you are obliged under Australian law to uphold it. One sided changes are illegal.
What !!!!???? Are you crazy Micro$oft ? This is a terrible move you just made. I am (was) a 100TB customer plus 25GB that I gained from special offers. As soon as your “new” plans start, you can count me out.
Apple and its iCloud offers are now much more interesting for me. Such a shame ! I was hesitating to try iCloud Drive, now I have a good reason to do so. Goodbye M$ (and for a very long time, believe me).
A french customer.
Wondering what Australian Consumer Law (ACL) authorities will think of this move if businesses and end users raise this issue. The ACCC and the Australian State and Territory consumer protection agencies, with the involvement of ASIC have been keen to prosecute breaches of Australia’s tough consumer laws introduced in 2010. Just take a look at the HP case for denying warranties and they now have those Australian Consumer Law notices at the very top of their web page. Also the term ‘Unlimited’ in marketing material has raised more than an eyebrow in the past.
Microsoft’s retraction possibly breaches ACL. The ACL states that when suppliers and manufacturers make extra promises about such things as the quality, state, condition, performance or characteristics of goods, they guarantee that the goods will satisfy those promises. If businesses have made other decisions based on this claim they will be entitled to a remedy, which can include compensation.
Crazy decision – goodbye
“We want to move from people needing Windows to choosing Windows, to loving Windows.”
Well done. Way to deliver!
I can’t believe you guys are even dropping the free OneDrive storage from 15GB+15GB to 5GB. Can MS really not handle that extra bit of storage? Currently I’m using OneNote for graduate school, but now it looks like I’ll be dropping the product. Terrible, terrible decision Microsoft.
Just cancelled my subscription. I’d rather go back to my Google account… At least even when they moved to a paid-only subscriptio for Google Apps they never penalised the other users they had had previously. MS just lost my faith in them with this move. Makes you wonder what else they could just backtrack on… maybe my free upgrade to windows 10 will require payments next year? What else do you have up your dirty sleeve microsoft? And only recently I was pushing for my company to move to the 365 platform… with MS flipflopping on terms like this I might just have ended up with egg in my face. Thankfully this happened just after our trial had ended and before we committed ourselves.
Microsoft needs to think beyond just looking at how much they’re losing $$ with one free service and look across how creating fans around great products will drive the ecosystem as a whole. Did you not learn anything from the XBOX ONE launch debacle? Have fun trying to win your customers back and see how much that ends up costing you in the long run vs any $$ you think you gained by doing this.
Just wow! What a mistake! Microsoft just undid the goodwill they built over the last couple of years. I can’t in my good sense by a Windows machine any more – desktop/laptop/mobile/anything. This made my decision easier to invest in a macbook pro as my next laptop. I just don’t want to invest in a platform that I can’t trust.
Oh yeah, and I just cancelled my family’s Home and removed OneDrive on my phone (i received an extra 100GB from my S6 but right now I’d rather remove all MS stuff from my phone and go back to Google apps). At least I recently moved back to Google Photos so I have less to migrate back than I would have had to.
Oh, congratulations Microsoft.
For a “Cloud First, Mobile First” company it’s a big deal, hun?
I really don’t understand why Microsoft is being so stupid in this last years.
Why do i will choose windows in my smartphone? for receive microsoft services in 20% of its potential? why i will choose if in android phones i have a better services from yours? why i will choose to be the last one?
And now, why i will choose your cloud service? Google Drive still give 15 GB for free. It’s not forcing me to buy more if i don’t need more. Google Drive is fastest to upload files, it’s in every relevant OS in the market. Google Photos have unlimited storage for photos. Why would i stick with onedrive?
You is making away from failure. Put out one more feature of Windows Phone, it’s is barely dead.
While presenting Continuum, multiple connected devices, saving search on a shared browser and whatever blablabla could that be, it’s “slighlty” inconsistent reducing storage like that. Really annoying.
MS worked so hard to rebuild its name and trust in the market.
I’d actually become a cheerleader I was so impressed. What a waste!
I owe MS thanks though because it looks like I just saved money on that Lumia 950XL.
I’ll just stick with Android for now.
I’ll be letting my Office 365 subscription lapse too!
Thanks MS!
I was using office 365 with unlimited storage on onedrive to store my photos, which is about 2To. I will now ask for a refund, and move all my pictures to another service. Whatever Microsoft will do from now, I’ll NEVER come back to onedrive, you just can’t be trusted.
Hi OneDrive Team/Microsoft,
I will make some changes to accommodate for your changes, this way you don’t have to worry about my transition. Here’s the road map for 2016/2017.
* I will be dropping OneDrive for google drive
* I will no longer be purchasing windows based computers/tablets, compatibility has changed, there is no need for windows anymore
* I already made the switch to PS3/PS4 (from Xbox 360), so I’ll just continue on that path
* I haven’t had a windows phone in over 3 years (loved it), and it will unfortunately stay that way from now on
* I still have a copy of Office 2013, it’s a great product but I don’t really see a need to ever upgrade from that version
* If i missed anything don’t worry about it, you won’t see any other complaints from me, as I’ll no longer be a customer
Hope you guys have a smooth and fun transition! Thanks for making it easy to switch to your competitors.
Regards,
And if you purchased your Office 365 via prepaid card then your are SOL – You cannot cancel, nor can you get a refund.
I just confirmed with Microsoft billing support agent “Javeir H” this evening. Thanks for nothing Microsoft. Supremely disappointing.
Just sounds like a bad joke. 5 GB are totally useless. Even today the average user needs more. I will (have to) move all my files to another cloud service.
For me there is no credibility left. In the future I will rely on other companies. Shame on you Microsoft, it’s the most underwhelming action of you for years!
This is pathetic. My productivity comes from the images I take on my phone (Lumia 925) and store on onedrive. I don’t need or want office 365, especially when I have a full legit copy of office. If Microsoft do this then I will use my google or dropbox instead. This after I have been getting people to come off iCloud and onto OneDrive to store their photos from their ******* devices. Instead of penalising all of us, why not just penalise the idiots who abused the service instead and leave those of us who are using the service correctly alone.
Thank you MS. You made me easy to decide to move to another cloud service. Thanks
this is outrageous and without precedent.
i recommended o365 based on unlimited storage. not gonna do it again now.
credibility lost.
Microsoft, you suck and you lie! The biggest reason I decided to subscribe to Office 365 Home was because of your advertised “Unlimited” OneDrive offer. Obviously, that was just a cheap bait and switch trick. Jeez, we still have the same old and tired Microsoft BS, and just when I was beginning to trust you again. Time to go all in with Google Drive and Google Docs. So long ********.
People who need to store large numbers of photographs should keep in mind that Amazon Prime INCLUDES unlimited storage for photos and they give you 5GB of storage for non-photo files.
I am already moving mine there.
The foundation of any relationship, business or otherwise, is trust and respect. Microsoft has shown with this move that they cant be trusted and have no respect for their customers.
It’s a sorry state of affairs, I have recommended to many people that they consider Office365 and One Drive. I plan to alert them all to the changes and will suggest that they switch to other products.
Microsoft needs to keep in mind that they are not the only game in town and that we do have options.
Any legal ramifications? I bought Office 365 license and unlimited storage was part of the deal. Actually unlimited storage was the only reason I bought it.
you said unlimited, now you are saying… well not really unlimited… I’m out, going to NAS and dropbox instead.
This is awful, I have a windows phone with all my photos/music/videos backed up. But now it seems I need to change services. I don’t understand why you would make this decision on the verge of releasing your new mobile product.
5GB is simply nothing when everything you take is in HD. Or when you add a few songs, this is the most redundant move I can simply think of.
Idiots.
Bye.
I simply can’t wrap my head around the logic of this?? You guys were going quite well listening to customers. Windows 10, a hit! Surface Pro series (after 2), great! OneDrive, perfect. 15gb is better than what almost anyone offered at the time. 7gb was the original and was a little low but fine.
So what the flying flip does unlimited users who “abuse” the unlimited tier have anything, ANYTHING to do with free users using 15-30gb of service?? Please, I need a logical answer from One Drive.
*** Microsoft!!!
What a horrible idea.
sigh…
Thanks for treating all of your users like criminals.
Thanks also for making me feel better about that iCloud 200GB for $2.99/mo subscription (needed for my iPhone photos as the OneDrive app is not totally reliable) which up until now I felt was a total ripoff compared to OneDrive. Now iCloud looks like a great deal.
Great… now I can’t store my photos from my phone on your free tier. I guess I’ll use iCloud since it integrates better with my iPhone and is cheaper.
Simply NOT acceptable, time to go back to Google Drive and my 17gb of FREE storage
Really bad move MS!
**** onedrive team
**** this
Have been a loyal user of OneDrive since it was called Skydrive a few years ago.
This is disgusting. This is a classic Bait and Switch tactic and it wouldn’t surprise me that some countries may even see it as illegal
I have been telling everyone how great Microsoft have been doing in recent years, how their software has vastly improved and how their customer service has improved….and then you go and do this. I will tell everyone I know (I’m their trusted IT guy) to ditch their onedrive and sign up to a more trusted service. I will also tell them not to buy Windows phones as it doesn’t come with enough cloud storage to back up their photos.
Disgusting. Shame on you Microsoft. I am moving to dropbox.
You need more tiers, with other price points.
If most people use <5GB then that's fine for free.
What about 10, 25, 50, 100.
As a medical student who uses OneDrive to take my study materials from my school computer to my windows desktop and to my Surface Pro 3, this puts me in an awkward position. I love my SP3 so much, it is fantastic at everything I need. I use the 15+15GB of free storage to move everything I do from my surface to my desktop at home/school. I use around 11GB. I need my 15 free GB. You can have the 15GB bonus from camera roll if you need to take that, but ****, don’t downgrade a promised feature when I purchased my SP3.
The problem is this is all take with no give. Microsoft is providing downside to users without any upside, it’s idiotic! Especially since the majority of the market already is preferring Drive and Dropbox. Microsoft has been slow to address simple yet major issues (ie. 20 000 file limit on OneDrive for business, lack of long path support for OneDrive, sync’ing issues, slower speed, etc.)
I’d understand capping storage at say 10 TB, or doing like Yahoo! did back in the day with their unlimited email where you can’t increase your storage at a rate that exceeds a certain level say can’t add more than a TB per year or month or something.
Really dumb move Microsoft, at this stage you should be focused on capturing the maximum market share, moving people away from Dropbox and Google Drive, bringing them into the Microsoft eco-system
don’t get me wrong, after this bs I’m out I no longer what to support a windows or microsoft eco system . But one drive on a windows 10 desktop and with a windows Lumia 10 phone it was brilliant, I think personally it is much better than iPhone offerings service wise, but none of that maters anymore, microsoft lied by using the lamest school boy being told of by the teacher excuse to push this through only people are not that stupid they’ll see the truth cause mr microsoft marketing genius doesn’t realise hes telling use that they are trying to screw you.
I have been a Microsoft “fanboy” for a long while now… I do all the insider previews, I use a Windows Phone, I subscribe to Office 365 Home, I talk up Microsoft. I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. Used and abused. So, when can I trust Microsoft? Yes, I have over 2 TB of data on OneDrive. But, that is part of what I pay for with my Office 365 Home subscription. I have my OneDrive folder on a 20 TB raid 10 array attached to my video editing workstation. All my projects and video assets get synced to the cloud through OneDrive, eventually. Is that a crime? So now you tell me I have to find another way? Not good Microsoft, not good at all.
Naming the users as the reason to gimp the service, that is lame. You have miscalculated Windows 10 impact and the “unlimited” offer on your storage costs.
I`m fine with the 1TB Office 365, as there truly is nothing that it limitless on this earth, however, changing the free from 30gb to 5gb, that has nothing to do with “abusive users”. Shame on you.
This is a sad and dumb move by Microsoft to alienate its most loyal customers. OneDrive was the _only thing_ I liked in WIndows 8. I still recommended Windows 10 to everyone despite the crippled OneDrive functionality and gladly paid for additional OneDrive storage. No more!
Go pound sand, Microshaft.
Phew! I’m so glad I didn’t trust M$ enough to use their OneDrive service. Google Drive for life! My next computer will be a Mac as well.
I dislike the apple desktop os but I’m afraid there is no other option itll be mac for desktop productivity and itll be ps4 for gaming windows tablet phone and desktop can go to **** time to save and move.
Thks microsoft for making this huge fan move to a inferior product just because you cant be trusted. I’m so angry right now.
Wow. Just wow. Going from 30GB storage to 5GB storage is a breathtaking 80% reduction in included storage. So disappointed at this decision.
How do you plan on reaching 1 Billion Windows 10 devices with it’s emphasis on OneDrive and online service integration by severely reducing the OneDrive capacity?
I created a Microsoft account to use just for Windows 10 and have been enjoying OneDrive and it’s integration into the OS. Unfortunately with only 5GB offered for OneDrive I will have to install Google Drive on my PC and use that as my main cloud storage as they are still offering 15 GB. If I’m going to have to go back and keep using my google account I may as well just sign in to Windows 10 with a local account and stop using my new MS account.
You finally start getting your act together again by releasing a modern consumer operating system and then you go and cut out the legs from under it. Without adequate storage space on OneDrive – at least the same as if not greater than competitors – your cloud emphasis strategy will fail.
Why not just get rid of unlimited storage, put a cap on it with an appropriate price and leave the 100, 200 paid plans and 15 free plan as is.
Give your heads a shake
Suggest Microsfot Word from now on auto correct “promise” to “proie” because ‘ms’ may back out from the word any time!!
this really blows but im thinking in the long run here:
i planned on cancelling my consumer onedrive account anyway since i subscribe to office 365 business essentials with 1tb storage. my only beef is that i cannot save my camera roll from my device to this particular account, only to my consumer onedrive account. with the new onedrive for business layout coming in the next while or so, will we be able to sync our camera roll to our onedrive for business accounts? if not this is gonna really suck!
Thanks guys. Will be sure to explain to my parents why their 30 gig of storage is 5 gig now, and why their photos won’t upload. And why their data will get deleted in a year.
Oh wait…no I won’t. I’ll just change to a service that doesn’t treat customers like ****.
Idiots.
Take responsibility for your product!
You are the liar! We can’t believe you!
I used to try my best to persuade my friends and everyone I know to use Onedrive, especially since the positive changes that Microsoft brought about a couple of years ago. I can say you have won my heart.
However, if you don’t cancel this super negative change, I swear that my tribe and I will boycott all of your services.
Avoiding abuse is understandable but changing limit from infinitive to 1TB is too much (probably 5-10 TB is more reasonable?) and 15 GB to 5 GB is not justifiable as it is far below the abused limit of 75 TB.
wow. google and apple are now so much more attractive. Already started to download my data from my 30gb account, once complete (overnight) the account will be abandoned minus the data ofcourse
Hope the CEO gets to hear all the wonderful comments that have been left in this thread.
p.s
nolonger going to replace my SP3 with a SP4, infact the SP3 is now up for sale and Apple Mac here i come!
This really sets a bad precedence for other Microsoft products and solutions. Our company had planned on buying a couple dozen Surface Book systems in the near future, but decisions like that will keep us from investing into anything Microsoft again. Our last big faux-pas decision with a Microsoft product was their IP business phone system – Response Point. After just 3 years the system was discontinued. Which forced us to replace all of our IP phones with another solution. It was certainly not a problem of the system itself but a complete failure of promoting the product into the right channels. Just when you thought that Sataya Nadella was guiding the company on a new track to bring back its customers and their trust they pull a complete 180 on them.
There are now almost 1000 comments in response to this post. Whoever did the brand damage vs. revenue gain calculation for these changes really miscalculated. This whole thing reeks of a senior executive doing anything possible to hit a performance metric.
This is a ridiculous breach of trust and a slap in the face to your most loyal users. Others have pointed out the idiocy of this change and the pathetic excuses with which you are attempting to rationalize it. We are not stupid, Microsoft. So here is how it will affect me: 1) plans to buy a Lumia flagship phone — gone; 2) plans to upgrade to W10 after TH2 — gone; 3) plans to purchase Surface 4 for holidays — gone. And I’m moving to another paid cloud service that values me as a customer.
So, how long will you REALLY upgrade W10 users for free? How long will you REALLY support W10 Phone? I have no idea, because you have shown you are not trustworthy and do not care for customers. I will invest no further in the Windows ecosystem.
Good luck competing against Apple and Google with marketing geniuses such as you apparently have.
Transferring all my stuff back to google (just got finished transferring it to OneDrive). Then Cancelling both my Office 365 subs. Half tempted to pawn my xbox one and buy a ps4 I’m so ******. Definitely not buying that surface I was eyeing or switching to windows phone either. I’m completely done with MS. ZERO Trust that you’ll deliver what you’ll promise anymore.
“OneDrive has always been designed to be more than basic file storage and backup.”
And what might that actually be?
Regardless, you have to have the basics covered first. In 2015, 5GB doesn’t cut it. Office 365 Personal subscriber so I’ll still get 1TB for another year, but seriously, I can’t see myself trusting to put much on this service because what if in a year MS decides the limit is 100GB?
Go all in MS or go home. Ain’t no one got time for games.
Lumia 920, Surface Pro 2, Windows 10 desktop
The low-end storage tier restrictions and timing of this OneDrive announcement could not have been worse if a hostile competitor had infiltrated Microsoft to take it down from the inside. Most of the enormous promise and goodwill built up around Windows 10, new Lumia flagship phones, Office everywhere and generous cloud storage could be utterly destroyed overnight by this reckless overreaction. Focus the pain on the smallest percentage of extreme users—not on your entire user base as well as many potential new customers. I was a big OneDrive fan, just bought Microsoft stock, purchased a new SSD to prepare for Windows 10 upgrade and planned to jump from Android to a Lumia 950. Now I’m second guessing my faith in Microsoft’s leadership.
time to download 10tb of onedrive now where am i going to put that now?
Buy several external hard drives.
Or use Amazon Cloud Drive—it is unlimited for 60$ per year, supposedly.
NAS? but thats not the point. The cloud is to give you access to your data from anywhere. Sync your data from your home pc or whatever but the cloud gives you the remote access.
I’m totally disappointed. I have already backed up my collection of private video files to Bitcasa (yep, the first “infinite storage solution”), and then they placed a limit and increased price to 999$ per year. So I just abandon the files there. Now I have the same story here—I’ve backed up my collection for several months to OneDrive. Bravo, Microsoft, that is the way to keep customers satisfied, definitely!
微软脑子真是秀逗了
I had just switched from mainly using Google Drive to OneDrive because of all the built in features with Win 10. But now I see as a free user I am being punished because a few people abused the unlimited tier? Seriously, why would you limit the free tier from 15 gigs to 5 gigs because a few people used 75TB on your advertised unlimited plan? My family photo’s are around 7 gigs, and that’s just family photos?
Back to Google Drive…
I feel like I cant even write how bad this is. Of all the problems Microsoft have made for themselves publicly this is probably going to be the one that I’ll remember the most for quite a while. One drive was the one thing I could actually justify to others to use with an O365 subscription compared to the competition especially when it works on IOS and Android too.
The reality is I dont really need O365 but was happy to pay for the subscriptoin when it included onedrive storage. 1TB is nice but its not enough and when you can get better syncing from competitors and pay the same price without office then whats the point. Sorry, office is great but in todays world its not necessary for most non business users.
And the idea of a lumia 950xl with a huge local storage, onedrive and continuum was borderline compelling for some non WP users was actually interesting. Not anymore.
I have 22 GB of photos just from Windows Phones. I think its time to drop o365 and spend that money on 1TB drop box. At least the syncing will be better and it still works on everything. Maybe just forget about the 950xl as well. I was really looking forward to that despite the joking ridicule about WP from friends colleagues.
Way to take your most enthusiastic customers and hurt them the most.
Wonderful story, reckoned we could combine some unrelated information, nonetheless really really worth taking a appear, whoa did a single learn about Mid East has got additional problerms also.
worst. move. ever. even worse than vista I reckon. if only the apple switcher ads were around today. i can just imagine them
I’ve been an avid Microsoft supporter for years. I’ve kept my Windows phone while seeing all of my friends abandon the platform for Android or iOS. I defended Windows 8 when everyone I know railed against the Live Tiles and showed them how it is useful as both a productive PC and a tablet. When 8.1 came out, I was in awe of the smart files feature and immediately started storing all of my documents there so I could retrieve them easily from any small 8″ Windows tablet with limited space, edit my files, then sync them back online. For a time, I could say my life truly was “untethered”. Indeed the smart file sync with a Microsoft account, along with 15GB of free storage PLUS a 15GB camera roll bonus was the main encouragement I used to convince friends and family to abandon their iClouds and Google Drives, even their Mozy’s and Carbonites, and move back to Microsoft.
Now I see that was a mistake.
You have no more differentiators now – no more smart files, no more camera roll bonus, no more high amount of free storage – not even the promise of a paid unlimited storage account. There is nothing to separate you from the slew of other online storage services that I can sync with a PC. Nothing to entice people away with. And on top of that, backpedalling on the promise you made. I understand the need to profit from your services, but surely there was a way to make this platform viable without such drastic cuts for the rest of us. I truly believed in this platform and now I feel like a fool. I wish I had never encouraged my friends to set up accounts on here, and now I have to explain to them they are going to lose 25GB of their storage space.
I’ve stopped synching my account with OneDrive for now while I seek a viable alternative. I invested in you. I am a bit uncertain exactly what type of consumer you are looking for with this new strategy, but I see now that it is not me. I’m sorry, Microsoft, but you lost me.
Are you going to sit with me and explain to my mother who has a very basic computer knowledge and a tablet with low storage that she can no longer look at more than 5gbs of photos because Microsoft took that away? She won’t understand your terrible reasons. All she will know is that her onedrive which she has learnt the basics of and where she has to be on the internet to look at photos won’t be there anymore. Are you going to be there when I have to spend time with her teaching her how to use a new app from a new cloud storage provider if I can find one? I’ve only ever used onedrive and I have no idea how to find another. Are you going to be there when I may have to remove the functionality altogether and see her disappointment and not having easy access to her memories? How am I meant to back up her photos she takes with the tablet now?
Microsoft you haven’t thought this through.
Any one tried opendrive?
OpenDrive too slow……
Amazon Unlimited Everything is a good option…
Can i use Amazon Unlimited Everything to backup multiple hard drive automatically?
i am trying OpenDrive with there free 14 day Trial and am getting 18Mbps/s upload with there windows app on my 18Mbps/s connection. Download is good about 150Mbps/s~ on my 250Mbps/s with chrome downloader.
In the last year I’ve switched back from using my Mac to a Surface Pro 3 (which I love) and my enthusiasm for the “New Microsoft” has encouraged an adoption of Microsoft products among many of my students. They, like I, have tended to purchase Apple products in recent years, but exciting and innovative products like the Surface machines have started to turn things around. The commitment to unlimited storage on OneDrive really put things over the top. So for the last year or so, at least around here, there has been a serious re-evaluation of Microsoft as a company worth being excited about.
Unfortunately, this all this all stops right now if this ruinous decision stands. I cannot be excited about a company that can’t be trusted to keep promises. And more generally, how could anyone be expected to rely on cloud-based products and services (which inherently require an unusual degree of trust) from a company that doesn’t honor its commitments?
I’m willing to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt for a short period of time here… no person or company is perfect. I hope they reflect on the wisdom of this decision, and take the opportunity to re-think it.
Oh well it was bound to happen. I have 130 GB for free (expiring in 2016) since I’ve signed up for various bonuses over the last couple years. 5GB is pathetically useless, even for simple collaboration. As for being upset that someone would upload their entire BlueRay collection to their unlimited OneDrive account – anyone with a quarter of a brain could see that coming. If you leave out cat food everyday don’t be upset when cats start coming around to eat it. That was a foolish management decision from day one.
A few bad apples, punish the good ones. What message are you sending?
what bad apples. Unlimited means unlimited even microsoft small print said unlimited. This is nothing to do with people using the unlimited service as a well unlimited service, this is really about microsoft trying to use the flimsiest of excuses to force most users onto onedrive, well they just failed big time.
Backing up my stuff right now… to GDrive.. So long OneDrive..
I’m not even mad. I don’t use cloud services as I often should. However, I am disappointed in these new steps that Microsoft is taking. Files these days are just going to get larger and larger. Microsoft seemed to be on the right path and setting a new standard. With these actions I guess they’re just willing to conform and be like the rest.
I switched from using dropbox to Skydrive(OneDrive) when it first came out since I got so much storage 15gb free 15gb for camera backup. 100gb from loyalty space and 100gb as a promotion. So with all the free space I moved everything on it. The fact it was so integrated with Windows OS I was really loving how easy it was to use it from anywhere. I raved about it to friends and had them switch over also. But now with this ridiculous announcement of shrinking our storage sizes for some cop out excuse of some users abusing the service. I made my mind up and dropping OneDrive and buying a WD my cloud drive. Thank you Microsoft for not being fair to you loyal customers and not banning abusers of service instead. Microsoft will change their mind on this idea because they will lose a huge customer base. But I won’t come back and just when I was starting to really trust Microsoft.
OhOh…..
OneDrive is the most attractive service in Office 365 for me…..
Anyway…….Farewell Microsoft!
OpenDrive. Checking it out now. Sigh. Just when I thought my cloud life was complete. You guys call this a “clear roadmap” for OneDrive? Makes me sick just thinking about it.
Oh, btw, since the promise of unlimited OneDrive storage has gone away….any chance we can get our smartfiles back?
No need to infinitely scale for small devices if you’re going to cap your service at 1TB.
Not that I’m going to be a user for much longer, but I’m just sayin’…
Microsoft: shame, shame, shame! I will not be renewing my 365 subscription. Respectable companies live up to their promises. They don’t backtrack when there are (quite predictable) problems that could be better addressed than using a blunt instrument to punish everyone. The definition of unlimited is unlimited. Very unhappy customer!
Haven’t felt this betrayed since they removed placeholders! It’s like they’re TRYING to run off their most loyal customers. I’m not even sure who they’re after anymore with all this nonsense. What the ****, Microsoft?
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home/?_encoding=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
Amazon offers unlimited for $60/year.
You want $24/year for 50GB or $84 for 1TB (office365).
I’ve loved OneDrive and told everyone I know at work, school, and home about it.
If people want to backup their movie collection, then let them. Amazon can obviously afford it, so why can’t you offer a plan similar?
SkyDrive/OneDrive isn’t the only one out there, and it’s not even the best one out there. So why screw it up even more?
Just because it’s built into Windows and other products won’t be enough to save it and keep it competitive. I would love to know who made this decision and what absurdities they thought of to justify it.
I don’t use office aside from OneNote (which you have a free one). For work we were using DropBox and I finally got them to agree to switch to OneDrive. Now that won’t happen at all, we’ll end up with Amazon or set up an ownCloud of our own.
I know people that have switched to OneDrive just for the purposes of backing up their media. Easily watch movies from any browser instead of needing to go find all of the disks. You can even play your movies on tablets and tvs that you can’t even view your content on without. That’s not abusing anything when you advertise unlimited.
50GB is a joke, and a really bad one at that. Offer higher plans such as 10TB, 25TB, or unlimited. Otherwise, there’s no point in ever mentioning OneDrive except to laugh and reminisce in what OneDrive was and could have been.
I’d pay to keep the 10.2TB that I have now.
Bad move, same like Xbox One, will lose your users and customers!!! I think all OneDrive free users will move to Google Drive.
Microsoft should punish the abuse users, not your normal & loyalty users. I had been started using OneDrive since 2009, free storage have 15GB(free)+10GB(loyal bonus)+15GB(Camera)+5GB(shared), after next year will decrease to 5GB, *** is this?!
Mobile first, cloud first?! Nowadays hear like silly slogan, what can 5GB storage do? Nothing!!!
All this move looks like abuse your normal & loyalty users!!! Feel so silly to be a Microsoft supporter.
is it just me or if this news spreads to mass media is it the final nail in microsoft consumer coffin? If it is ists a sad day caus ei love windows 10 on mobile and desktop, I love live tiles, I love onedrive and groove offline mode but even I canot justify this bulls. I’m seriously thinking about changing platforms once and for all but there is not another choice for me who is productive and games.
Wow. I just read about the changes coming for onedrive. An incredibly disappointed loyal customer here. You are not doing yourself any favors here. I own surface pro 3 and windows phones and have got all my family using windows phones, tablets and pc’s. The 15gb one drive intergration with 15gb photo bonus was a huge selling point. I agree with those who are asking why you are taking this away even from people who own windows hardware such as surface pro’s and lumia phones? I’ll now be looking at other cloud storage options. Make it right microsoft.
This feels completely wrong. If you had a problem with abuse of the unlimited storage then change TOS to reflect reasonable limits. But handling this matter in this way doesn’t reflect well on Microsoft. We all thought you finally wanted to compete in the cloud storage space but baiting customers with promises of unlimited storage then cutting them off makes me doubt Microsoft’s motives.
Try again – do the right thing.
So, reading between the lines, here’s what I’m betting happened: some VP of cloud services wasn’t meeting financial metrics for his division, and that meant no (or reduced) bonus. So this person ordered his underlings to make whatever changes were needed to cut costs and boost revenues – even if it meant reneging on previous commitments and damaging the whole Windows ecosystem.
I wonder if Nadella even knew about this before today.
I no longer trust Microsoft at all. Period. I’ll make every attempt to move away from any and all offerings of theirs.
WOW, almost 1000 comments here and more than 10’000 votes on User Voice within ONE DAY! Microsoft, are you LISTENING TO US? YOU SIMPLY CANNOT IGNORE US ANYMORE!
it doesn’t mater if they listen to us matey the damage done at this point is gona be huge. They’ve been terrible with marketing for years, the surface book was the first sign of life, they just stuck a dager in that one.
Only way back is through strong contracts. They would need to guarantee me a lifetime and not device lifetime, my lifetime guarantee of a minimum amount of space and that would now need to be higher than the 30 gig they are about to destroy from me, but they wont do that.
windows phone 7 buyers left in the cold.
surface rt left in the cold
Xbox one always online if you wana play your own dvds lol or 1 houre of shared game time when going to a friends house, 1 hour lol, no wonder ps4 is the beter selling console and by a large margion. I currently have a ps4 lol.
Now they are gona take away 25gigs of my free space, change the way I use my desktop and mobilwe phone all because microsoft made a mistake and offered a unlimited space for people that have nothing to do with the majority being penalised. Priceless. If I could afford to change my phone today I would have done. My Lumia 930 is awesome and onedrive is too but microsoft we do not trust in anymore.
**** you MS!
*******
KCUF
I was stunned to read this. I can’t believe they have just reduced the free tier from effectively 30 to 5gb. That’s 80% reduction…on what planet did they ever think that would be acceptable?
Aren’t they trying to sell their phones and surface pros? Where on earth do you people expect them to back up their photos to?
Still, am happy that they at least told us about it today. I was going to purchase a surface tablet for my father, but won’t do so now.
Total fail. All their goodwill undone in a minute of madness. Won’t be buying your new phone now either, I simply can’t trust you guys. You’ve lost peoples trust and that’s the worse thing a business can lose.
Bye Bye Onedrive Outlook Office etc.
Office 365 already canceled
Moving my files to Google Drive, Google promises not what they do not hold.
I don´t even have 500gb taken of my 1TB but its principle.
Uso o One Drive a anos desde os primórdios do Sky Drive. Hoje me deparo com a noticia de um dowgrade drástico e obrigatório. A Micro$oft se baseia no fato de alguns usuários do Office 365 (pago e com armazenamento ilimitado) chegarem a ter 75TB em nuvem. E o que eu tenho a ver com isto? Por qual motivo não limitam a capacidade de armazenamento destes usuários??? Quando vocês (Micro$oft) dizem: “produtividade e colaboração que beneficiam a maioria dos usuários do One Drive” estão se referindo exatamente a quem? Realmente são tão ESTÚPIDOS a ponto de pensarem que 10% de usuários pagantes fazem um marketing maior e geram maior arrecadação que 90% de usuários gratuitos? É esse tipo de MESQUINHARIA que diferencia a Micro$oft de empresas como o GOOGLE. Conforme uma usuária disse em um post na loja da Micro$oft: “vocês realmente acreditam que existem 1 bilhão de idiotas no mundo? “Nunca me senti tão lesado com um produto/serviço da Micro$oft nas últimas décadas como agora! Como vou reduzir mais de 20GB em 5GB?Pela primeira vez, faço QUESTÃO de traduzir este texto:Use the onedrive the years since the beginning of Sky Drive. Today I am faced with the news of a drastic and mandatory downgrade. Micro$oft is based on the fact that some Office 365 users (paid and with unlimited storage) have come to 75TB cloud. And what I have to do with this? For what reason do not limit the storage capacity of these users??? When you (Micro$oft) say, “productivity and collaboration that benefit the majority of users of One Drive” are referring exactly to whom? Really they are so STUPID as to think that 10% of users are paying a higher marqueting and generate more revenue than 90% of free users? It’s that kind of pettiness that differentiates Micro$oft companies such as GOOGLE. As one user said in a post on the Micro$oft store: “You really believe that there are 1 billion idiots in the world?” I never felt so aggrieved with a product/service of Micro$oft in recent decades as now! How will reduce more than 20GB in 5GB?
I wonder if Microsoft is on a suicide mission. First you announced windows 10 with UWP with W10M coming soon, followed by the “tough choices” email and layoffs, losing my interest as a developer in the whole UWP idea. After announcing and shipping surface book and surface pro 4, now you’re taking away the OneDrive advantage, hiding behind some ******** excuse of innovation, productivity and collaboration.
Is this stupid decision related to the deals you signed with apple and google? I hope there would be enough people interested in whatever future you envision, or actually would be willing to try it out. I won’t be surprised if a lot of developers, consumers and businesses lose interest in the future, including HoloLens I’m even skeptical of your “free” windows 10 offer.
Thx for the bait and switch M$. And thank you for making my decision to migrate to a different ecosystem. Thanks for helping me decide NOT to keep my new 640XL I just purchased and also the Wireless Display adapter. My OneDrive plans to upgrade has been cancelled. My data is not private anymore, they never were. Shame on me. My plans to purchase Surface and flagship WP for me and my family are now halted indefinitely.
You must really REALLY desparately wanted us to leave the Windows/M$ ecosystem and go to a different ecosystem.
That’s really disappointing.
Sure restricting unlimited usage to 1TB I could understand – if some users were using 75GB or more. But reducing 15GB limits to 5GB for the average joe? Is that the make or break limit for overall cloud storage?
Can we leave the little guys alone for a change?
Really, do you think that they could be worse on messaging? If you say it is unlimited, then you have to expect that people will actually test the limits and if you are not ready for that, then do not say it is unlimited. Alternatively, state that there are usage restrictions, so that abusers can be dealt with.
Now I can use my google drive now! Goodbye Onedrive,Goodbye microsoft.
I used to have 50 GB plan for about a year. Recently, I upgraded to 100GB. I am not a business user.
If this change affects me, I will be the unhappiest person with microsoft. Storage is getting cheap day by day. Why punish everyone, you(microsoft) have had “usage policy” – punish the one who stored 75TB of movie collection etc etc..
There seem to be other viable options available rather then upping the price for storage.
Uh, this is bad news for everyone. I have 30 GB free and I was thinking I will pay for more space. But not now. Not ever. Bye OneDrive.
How can we trust that W10 will be free after free update?
Im so glad this change happent before the release of surface pro 4. A long time mac user was about to make the switch with the new serface and onedrive, saying things like apple and google just kill their services if the dont like them, not like old good microsoft… boom!
When they reduce even de 15GB to 5GB you see that Microsoft is in bad conditions they do every thing to save money. We can´t thrust our data in a company like that. When they to things like that they save also money on security.
Its time to move all you data to an other company. And Office is not a reason to stay, you have other good programs like Google Docs and Apple icloud Doc.
Guess what guys, ive removed all Microsoft apps and services from my Android phone. Tonight I’ll be migrating all by personal files from OneDrive into Google drive, and…. One last thing, I’ll be setting up email forwarding from outlook.com to my gmail account and ignoring that email account.
PS: I won’t buy any more surface pros after buying 2 in the past couple of years.
One day Microsoft comes with a blackmail like “you have to pay to use windows 10 or we gonna to block it“
MS should think again
I think this is an amazing present to other competitors and a mistake by Ms. As an office365 user I could understand the problem about unlimited storage but reduce free storage from 15 to 5 GB and with synchronization between many device with the same account can be a big problem for the users that can decide to move to another competitor!!!
I was about to switch to MS ecosystem – Microsoft Lumia 950 phones, Surface Pro 4
so I could store all my docs/data in one place
But not anymore. No point in moving over to MS when they did a about face on their policy !
What I don’t understand is they say only a small amount of users are storing large amounts of data yet they are changing the policy for all !!! Why not cap those users ? Why change the policy for all ?
Clearly greedy Microsoft is out to make more money! Ridiculous.
GREED is Microsoft culture even under the new leadership of Satya Nadella
It’s a complete betrayal to your loyal customers MS. For a few customers you simply can’t punish millions them. And i believe those “a few” customers aren’t wrong either. As you promised to give unlimited storage they aren’t wrong surely.
It’s like a situation where MS forgot to put an asterisk sign to refer a limit to their unlimited offer, more precisely forgot to give a fair usage policy! And people are suffering now for MS’s mistake. You can impose these limits to the new customers but as long as you were promised to give unlimited storage you can’t simply put your bull*** decision upon old users.
Frankly storage is the only reason for using OneDrive over GDrive or Dropbox – and i can’t see any reason to use it now! Yah – sure, the bonus storage offerings aren’t affected by this decision but who knows when MS will again stop those offerings too!?!
Please learn something from your mistakes MS. Please learn! I am a MS fan and a ******* windows phone developer who still develop apps for windows phones since windows phone 7.1! But your ignorance to your loyal users and your own platforms(Zune,Windows Phone,OneDrive(it’s horrible on Windows 10)) is gradually making me to hate MS!
MS’s strategies were ******* **** and please make sure that it won’t be a **** all over again!
I’am very disapointed… big step back…;/
https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-give-onedrive-users-back-their-storage-options?recruiter=418578378&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
This is a huge disappointment! I am using 70 GB at the moment and if there is not going to be a subscription for 100 GB anymore (50 GB maximum) what is the bloody point of using such service in this day and age?! It’s a pity that we don’t know the real reasons, but I am just shocked, honestly, I am shocked… Microsoft is wasting their huge potential, what a shame…
What the actual ****. I have been using OneDrive for years and now i am jumping ship to Google Drive. Punish everyone because some one was abusing the System ? Keep this up and you will lose the few loyal customers you have.
Microsoft is telling us that Google Drive is better than OneDrive. I’m moving some files to Google Drive.
Great. I just moved from dropbox to OneDrive. I was planning to buy a lumia 950 and enjoy the whole windows 10 – OneDrive experience.
Sure I can get Office+1TB free for a year, but what then? I will be sitting with a new lumia phone and have to pay extra for OneDrive. And in a years time, what will they charge me? And for how much space?
No, Microsoft can’t be trusted.
I’ll keep my samsung galaxy and move back to dropbox. Disappointing, but I can live with that solution.
Agree. I was in the same situation. Fighting to get a Lumia 950 in my company (they offer iPhones), promoting Office anual suscriptions (they buy licences and keep them for years),…. Today I’m starting to rethink all this. I didn’t expect a unilateral change in the rules like this from a company like Microsoft. I don’t trust in companies that act like that. No good for them… this is a unnecessary punishment for loyal customers/users.
Unbelievable! I was promoting OneDrive in informal chats… I saw their strategy as disruptive, offering much more storage than others for same or even less price… a step forward and ahead of competitors! (associated to a subscription service which I think has been very good for Office too). With this last decision I think they take two steps back… and they take away extra storage for Windows Phone users!!… Another motivation to get a Windows mobile pone that is going away… as I said, unbelievable. Starting today I will explore other alternatives. Let’s see what finally happens in 2016.
Worst decision in this decade. Users are crying, Google welcomes it and celebrates.
This is incredibly stupid.. i can see you removing the unlimited storage but reducing the free storage makes zero sense. It just makes you look incredibly cheap. people already have a lack of trust for microsoft products and its things like this that ruin it. removing the camera roll storage is even more insane, with winphone marketshare as it is, you want to kick those who stuck with the platform in the balls with this? What? are? you? thinking?
You’re making it very hard to be an ms fanboy…
I used to be a Microsoft fanboy. I use Windows Phone when everyone use Android or iOS.
I use OneDrive when most people around me use DropBox.
I’m so disappointed with this stupid move and going to switch to Google.
I purchased Office 365 because of the PROMISE of unlimited storage. This is a classic bait and switch! I’m so disappointed with MS. Completely unethical marketing.
And many more are in the same boat… me included. Microsoft will lose customers because of that, and many more than they gained with their promise(s). Not even free 1-year offer for some users will help them, they’ll see effects in 2017 as well when those free subscriptions disappear as well. And financially they’ll feel it right away.
More of my thoughts: http://itflame.blogspot.hr/2015/11/give-us-back-our-storage-onedrive.html
Nicely done, Microsoft, I have been advocating Office 365 because of the excellent storage deal (even if it shows up as 10TB for me, which is more than enough for high definition pictures and videos). That free marketing for Office 365 ended with this blog post.
Dear MSFT,
After an absence of many years – 12 to be exact – from the Windows world (OS AND Office) just under one year ago I bought a 5 user license for Office 365 + 1 Drive for my MacBook+iMac ~ and for 3 others in my family.
Explaining to my family that an active Microsoft hater was about to spend $99/yr for a software subscription was interesting. The disbelief was dripping from the rafters, but they trusted my judgement, sad thanks for the license seats and off we went. Everyone liked the 1TB storage which went along with the license.
I didn’t ask for unlimited anything, but read the announcement with great interest, wondering if I’d ever use my 1TB, let alone the “here’s 10TB to get you started while we rollout the service” friendly announcement which pinged into my inbox a couple of months later. Indeed, the OneDrive folder would have to be located on a CIFS NAS share to be usable in any practical sense…but I digress.
Stupidly, I thought Microsoft had changed. At long last (it seemed) they were embracing the customer, responding in forums, communicating…innovating. All good.
Until those tendrils of trust were ruptured by a bone-headed, nonsensical, illogical ************************ move like this. Not for the first time – but admittedly the first time in a number of years – I was once again (rhetorically) exclaiming; “What the **** were you thinking?”
This decision is not just wrong, it’s got malice writ large all over it. I refuse to do business with a malicious supplier. Trust is absolutely, unconditionally essential.
Let me make this plain;
No, you haven’t touched my 1TB limit on any license seat. The trust is gone, replaced once again by suspicion mixed with ancient dislike. What you’ve done is made me wonder when the other shoe will drop, and my Office365+1Drive will wind up costing me many multiples of the $99/yr I’m paying now. When will that be? How much will it become? Answers to both questions are the same; “I have no idea”.
BUT
I’m not sticking around to find out.
This morning I signed up for 1TB with Dropbox and that easily fits MY 13.12 GB, plus the 788MB my family (combined) uses. Office 365 itself? I can live without it – easily. Did so when I ditched Windows in favor of Apple, and never regretted it for a single moment. Google Docs/Sheets/GMail and occasionally Open Office if I needed to zoom in on micro-formatting a document or letter. Yes there was a learning curve, but one with ONLY benefits at the end – oh, and LibreOffice is even better still.
BTW, it would have been a WAY harder decision *IF* Outlook 2016-or-whatever-it’s-now-called could handle a simple Google calendar sync, but noooo, you made this easy.
When Office365/1D renewal time comes around in a couple of months, I’m outta this environment – and this time not to return. No more Office.
Whatever the outcome of this is, the losses in credibility and trust (not to mention revenue) that you may suffer are self-caused. No one did this to you…you did it to yourselves.
I’ve just cancelled my Office 365 subscription.
I have bad memories of Microsoft ‘bait and switch’ tactics and suspect this is the thin end of the wedge.
I have an Office 2016 Pro Plus license through my place of work. It was nice to have more, but if I’m honest I wasn’t really using them. I only ever really use Outlook and Word at home anyway.
This is TechNet Plus all over again. IT Professionals investing their own time and money to use and recommend Microsoft products and having the rug pulled from under their feet.
I already use Android for my TV an STB a tablet a phone and a watch. You can probably guess what’s happening next.
Rest in peace windows, office, winPhones, surface, …
please reconsider this hasty decision
i was happy with onedrive, i dont like the idea, that google owns all my data. I frequently use my eMail@live.de. But now there will be a change.
i think the cut to 5Gb for free users is the biggest mistake. Maybe 30 Gb with camera roll is to much, but dont cut it to 5Gb.
Who cares, I don’t use one drive and I never will, nor will i use any other “cloud” storage service.
So what do I do if I want and need more than 1TB and I’m willing to pay more ?
do what everyone else will do…dropbox
As a longtime Microsoft user and customer, who always recommended your products and services to others and believed your promises, I can say just one simple thing: This is bad dirty trick to your faithful customers and defenders.
In case you won’t change your decision and keep the existing conditions for current users, many of them will change their mind and will leave you (including me).
I feel disgusted and cheated!
Since you rename your service on certain milestones once and a while, please rename again…
skydrive > onedrive > floppydrive
OneThirdDrive.
Thank God for NAS, I will probably ditch OneNote at this point. Thinking of returning the SP3 I just bought.
OneThirdDrive is the next Xbone.
If you decide to roll out unlimited storage and think that there will not be anyone the the internet thinking wow, this is truly unlimited, then you are a fool (you have nothing to do in a tech company anyway).
I think the problem here is that marketing needed unlimited, so they gave us unlimited without checking with engineering. The OneDrive client and indexing service is probably not as robust as marketing thought. From the storage perspective i`am sure the handful of 75tb users are not a problem at all.
From the bigger perspective i think its more interesting to see what way Microsoft takes the product.
When Microsoft rolled out unlimited i thought Microsoft finally offered a “Windows Drive” that would enable me to work on all my files across all my devices, and that i could just put my digital life in their cloud. So i bought a my private 365 subscriptions to do this (i already had 3 subscriptions from other sources).
From a collaboration perspective of it, what private user needs 1tb of storage to collaborate? And to be honest i think this is what its all about, selling 1tb storage to users that needs 10% of it. There are plenty of competing products that have a much better and easier collaboration. If this is the case, they should get rid of the OneDrive name, and just call it “Office Drive”.
I also find it interesting that the OneDrive team don’t have access to Microsoft new products when they calculated the amount of images you could fit. The lumia 1020 samples i recently looked at was all >12 mb per image and 20 sec of video was 49,3mb. This means that from the time they did their calculations to the time they posted their 1tb service lost 3/4th of its “value” if you are using their own leading product-line. And as technology pushes forward it will get more and more useless by the day.
If Microsoft was just after the 75tb users, whey would limit their unlimited offer to 5tb or 3tb.
Instead they put it back to 1tb without any real upgrade paths. This is just directly hostile towards all the power users that wanted to embrace their cloud.
If 1tb is enough for you today, is it enough for tomorrow? Do you want to gamble and find out? do you want a provider with a real upgrade path? Maybe your next phone should have a low res camera?
If they were serious they would offer some more futureproof 500gb, 1tb or 2tb upgrades (maybe up to a 3tb or 5tb limit?)
I don’t have 75tb of data, but uploading my images, documents and personal projects landed me around 1.5tb of usage, witch i think was “fair use” of their unlimited service.
Quotawise i got 15gb free, 200 from sourface and 1tb from 365, thus i`am above with less than 300gb.
With Microsofts new cap and no real futureproof paths, i will be ending office 365 and move my digital life somewhere else.
I know amazon at least want me as a loyal customer, and they sure love my data, maybe i should test out one of their tablets when i`am at it…
Really totally stupid decision.
Microsoft, do you know what are you doing? I’ll try to do the math:
75000 GB are 14000 times the average? So the average is about 0,5 GB. I assume, the average belongs to subscribers and free users?
You have 15 Mio Office 365 subscribers (Q4/2015), and lets say 150 Mio free OneDrive users (who knows this number?).
That says you have about 82500 TB data or 20625 HDDs with 4TB each. With raid and spare drives lets say 40000 HDDs ($100 each). This looks not like a big numbers for a company like MS – and you have problems with this?
So, how many really use 75TB, it can’t be more than a few. Or the numbers you provide are wrong.
And, how do you know the content of your customers, do you look inside our storage?
All this could only mean, you want to shutdown you OneDrive Business for consumers.
Thanks Microsoft! I switched everything to Microsoft Services! I’m using SkyDrive since the beginning and now I will lose all my free storrage :-\
I thought this is the perfekt time to switch to Office 365 – but then the next slap in my face! It’s not possible to share the Office 365 Licenses with my Family because two of the had activated a free 30-Day subscription a few months before. So they are not able to get invited to Office 365 by me. So no reason for me to upgrade my Office 2010 to Office 365!!!
Microsoft please don’t foul your customers. I really would like to stay with Micorosoft, but you make it hard for me to do so. Android and Google are very. very, very attractive alternatives. And Linux Elementary OS is a great deal to replace my two Windows 10 systems!
Just my few cents…
Thank you MS!!
As your advice, I have completed to transfer from you to BOX today. Thank you for your help and Good Bye~
Hey Microsoft, if you follow through with this, I am leaving you for Google. Funny thing: I left Google for you, because they screwed me like you want to continually screw me now.
I bought the Xbox One, I use Windows Phone, I use Windows 10. I don’t abuse my OneDrive, why do you want to continually alienate your users?
Do you want to close shop? The sheer idiocy of what you do these days is incomprehensible. I am currently using 7 GB of my “free” 29 Gb. Stuff you GAVE ME for being a loyal supporter. Now you want to take it away? Screw you. Do that, and I swear I’ll go to Android, I’ll install Linux, And I’ll use Gmail. I might even get rid of my XBOX.
Sincerely,
The guy who supported you through all your stupid miss-steps but is now getting tired of you ****.
They clearly don’t give a rat’s *** about anyone’s loyalty to their brand. This was a bait and switch tactic all along. Give away lots and lots and lots of space and get people to use it. Once they do Microsoft comes out and say “HA HA! Now you have to pay for it!”
When my Xbox Live subscription runs out, I’m dumping my Xbox One for the far superior Playstation 4. And I’m literally in the market for a new mobile right now… Windows Phone is dead to me. All that leaves is my work laptop where they pay for the OS and Office for me.
Way to go Satya Nadella. You’ve literally made every Steve Ballmer hater miss him instantly.
Good ol’ Microsoft Bait and Switch. Clearly, this was the plan all along otherwise they’d have only made the change from 15 to 5 GB for new signups after a certain date. Between this and how awful Windows 10 Mobile is, my decision on my next phone is REALLY simple. I honestly think Satya Nadella was brought in to kill Microsoft off so they can split up the company into individual, smaller companies. And the longer this idiot is in charge, most of those won’t survive.
WAY TO KILL DECADES OF BRAND LOYALTY WITH ONE MORONIC DECISION SATYA.
– First of all, why did Microsoft announced unlimited plans if they cannot handle them?
– “How exactly is storing unlimited stuff in an unlimited storage account abuse?”
– If someone in Office365 abuse storage why downgrade the free users from 15GB to 5GB?
– Someone sitting in top management keeps changing policies at Microsoft at will! Why? That just shows you are confused & don’t have proper planning for future.
– Camera upload now will be downgraded to 5GB! Thats fine for android users who anyway gets unlimited photo storage for standard photo size from google, but for Windows Phone users, don’t have Google drive nor apps that can freely upload photos to some other cloud storage site! They are screwed from both side! (WP & No free cloud storage from Microsoft)
First you promise unlimited storage, then you blame those few users who uploaded several TBs and then in the end, you punish ALL users?
Yep. It’s called a really lame excuse to justify their bait and switch tactic. This was always the plan. We’re just finding out about it now. Google Drive and Dropbox are about to get REALLY REALLY popular. Might I also suggest:
ADrive – 50gb free
Box – 10gb free
Copy – 15gb free
Google Drive – 15gb free plus bonus storage for pics
Hive – Unlimited FREE
MEGA – 50gb
pCloud – 20gb
Streamnation – 20gb
Syncplicity – 10gb
Don’t worry Microsoft. We’ll be removing our data soon.
If I read this right, then Google offer unlimited photo storage for the majority of camera’s eg iphone 6s:
High quality
Unlimited free storage
Regular cameras: Recommended for phones or point-and-shoot cameras that are 16 megapixels (MP) or less.
Uses: Good for typical printing and sharing.
Size: Save high-quality photos and videos while reducing size.
Original
Limited free storage: Uses your Google Account’s 15 GB of free storage, regardless of photo or video size.
DSLR cameras: Recommended if you take photos with a DSLR camera and want to maintain the exact original quality.
Uses: Recommended for printing large banners or to store original files.
Size: Stores your photos and videos exactly as you captured them.
https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6220791
This is the last straw. Screw Microsoft, screw OneDrive. There are plenty of alternatives.
So, I’m getting screwed because you can’t handle 75GB of “unlimited” space of some users? You’re telling me that I can’t use my Windows Phone because I can’t backup my camera roll photos and videos?? I didn’t think I would go back to Android, but hey you’re forcing me to it! And you can be sure I won’t be using your services there too!!
This is just WRONG!!!! No wonder they call you M$!!!!
When the unlimited storage was announced some time ago, I was wondering how it would turn out in the end as it sounded a bit ambitious.
Now I’ve got the answer.
I don’t need unlimited storage – at the moment I’m not even using 1 TB of my (currently still) 10 TB available OneDrive storage BUT to actually have the storage space that I’ve already been granted REDUCED – to be straight – kind of ****** me of.
Don’t get me wrong. I know that by paying around 110 Swiss Francs for Office 365 on all my devices and additionally getting 1 TB of cloud storage is still quite a good deal in comparison. Although everybody seems to expect to get everything for free those days, it’s clear that this can not work in the end. BUT it is a very bad business practice to lure people into something with a good offer, only to subsequently raise Prices – or in this case cut down services.
So, you should listen carefully to this unfolding ********* and in the future think twice about announcing something UNLIMITED. Because maybe except for the universe, everything has it’s Limits in this world.
Пиздец 2
This has to be a very very late april fool…
If you offer UNLIMITED STORAGE, then you can’t simply reduce the amount of storage, if some users USE your offer….
When you make this happen, I’m going to return to Google Drive (and Google Docs, and so on)
If you do that I’ll sell my Lumia and I’ll buy only Android. Good By M$.
“in pursuit of productivity and collaboration” is a rather a grand title for basically taking away the only reason I use my OneDrive. This was also a major driver for signing up to an Office 365 account. A more reasonable solution would have been to reintroduce the 10TB limit.
Bye bye unlimited OneDrive means bye bye Office 365 as well. Not happy
Why MS why? Not only I will move to Google Drive who are solid with their 15GB free service but I’ll move also to Android phones. This is so disappointing.
Why do Microsoft continually sabotage their own products ? It should be at least 15gb free just to match Googles offering.
Microsoft is not Apple, you do not have the marketshare in mobile or tablets to do this at this time, you really need a reality check if you think you can charge like Apple does for cloud storage.
They have the userbase and brand loyalty to get away charging more. Brand loyalty that they built by creating something people think they want and delivering on it.
This is where MS continuously falls short since you take a great idea and execute it in a way that makes it less desirable or just do not bring product to completion before moving onto next great idea
Goodbye microsoft. Google, Mega – I’m going in!!!
Sure. “Unlimited Storage” has some form of theoretical cap somewhere, but if Microsoft didn’t foresee such situations where people really took the unlimited factor at face value, the whole OneDrive team are incredibly naive. At the end of the day its essentially free storage, who isn’t going to take the opportunistic view and use it?
In fairness, the minority that managed to get 75 TB into the cloud (which is an interesting achievement none the less) technically have done nothing wrong. No rules/terms of service/agreement dictate what data you can send up to OneDrive and in what capacity. Aside from file size limit (which is around 8 – 10 GB) nothing is going to stop you from using it this way.
Its also interesting that this blog post reveals just how much visibility they have on the specific data you send up to OneDrive, right down to size, type and a whole lot more.
It would appear Microsoft have now realised that this would be unsustainable, but now we all get punished because of THEIR oversight.
The 1 TB storage for Office 365 subscribers isn’t that bad, most will be happy with that and you will generally struggle to get 1 TB up into the cloud of the average broadband connection (as the upload speeds are usually too slow). I think they’ve really messed up on the free plans however. Microsoft have gone from being a really attractive option to behind Google and Apple.
Well done, best of luck to your PR team, might have to start paying the costs saved on OneDrive to overtime pay for them! No one is happy and you’ve really messed up.
You are really rendering the service almost useless for Non-Office 365 users just because some stupid *** exploited the unlimited data limit? Way to go, punish those who did nothing wrong for a few people who did!
How could MS possibly have been so naive as to assume that no-one would actually use a storage service with advertised unlimited capacity? And then punish users by cutting the free space to uncompetitive levels and effectively doubling the pricing of storage-only plans?
“Since we started to roll out unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 consumer subscribers, a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings.” — So you invaded a user’s account to see exactly what they were storing? I’m sure this is acceptable per your end user agreement that everyone agrees to when using your service. It still seems wrong to me. So much so that I need to re-evaluate where I am storing my data. It would be a shame to not use the storage that comes with my Office 365 subscription.
The worst thing a person can do, even if you’re a politician or a businessman, is to lose confidence. We pride ourselves on Microsoft, they behaved to be the good person. They gave us a product, with easily understood frames, and suddenly change the ways on how we accepted our way to work in the years to come (OneDrive).
I feel a bit stupid, I have convinced my friends and family about the advantage of Onedrive. Just a few days ago we order Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL, along with a Surface Pro 4 and a Surface Book. Fortunately, these four products are still not delivered.
The worst thing a person can do, even if you’re a politician or a businessman, is to lose confidence. We pride ourselves on Microsoft, they behaved to be the good person. They gave us a product, with easily understood frames, and suddenly change the ways on how we accepted our way to work in the years to come (OneDrive).
I feel a bit stupid, I have convinced my friends and family about the advantage of Onedrive. Just a few days ago we order Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL, along with a Surface Pro 4 and a Surface Book. Fortunately, these four products are still not delivered.
The worst thing a person can do, even if you’re a politician or a businessman, is to lose confidence. We pride ourselves on Microsoft, they behaved to be the good person. They gave us a product, with easily understood frames, and suddenly change the ways on how we accepted our way to work in the years to come (OneDrive).
I feel a bit stupid, I have convinced my friends and family about the advantage of Onedrive. Just a few days ago we order Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL, along with a Surface Pro 4 and a Surface Book. Fortunately, these four products are still not delivered.
Whoever made this decision deserved to be fired. There is not a single customers, be it loyal Microsoft supporters or potential customers are happy with these changes. This has great impact to the rest of the Microsoft products and services and it’s not worth it.
Again, due to “a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings. In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average”, you are making this change that made every customers unhappy. Bravo! Whoever that made that decision to make this post deserved to be fired, honestly.
At this point, it’s also incredible that with 1000+ angry comments on this post and several thousands more on all the articles about this subject, there’s still not a word from Microsoft.
It is a shame. I have advised many people to start using OneDrive, and experience a lot of complaints of users who see a great impact on their rights. So a better idea is to leave the current situation and use new rules for new customers. That is not more then only fair.
Microsoft: you have to keep your promises. Do you want to loose us? Must we go to another platform? Just say it and we will leave soon!
It is a shame!!!
I have all my devices windows based from phone with 20MP camera , tablet and laptop and desktop. And this has been the case since SkyDrive started all of these devices run office 365 and the last few years I have been suggested by Microsoft to store your data in the cloud so everything I do is synced to OneDrive I do not have any content that is not normal daily spread sheets , letters, posters , my entire photos collection taken now I have download them and store them on a NAS and only use what I need how this help my productivity.
thanks for nothing Microsoft anyone know how much you get with drop box and iCloud and whatever that Google thing is?
I am a fan MSa Lumia phones. In its neighborhood and in my family, I persuaded 10 people to migrate from Android to WP. A strong argument was onedrive parameter. I’ll have to apologize to those people and help them with the transition back to Google. I do not know which company itself spoils the reputation. Get it back is sometimes impossible. Excuse my English.
Thanks! that’s awesome. staying with Google.
I’m paying Google monthly for their services and recently, I thought to move to Microsoft but then this makes my decision quite simple, I’m staying with Google.
I actually told few of my friends to move to OneDrive but I certainly will recommend Google over Microsoft now.
You could really do more for these of us who used your service for a long time, thanks for nothing!
are you serious, really!
This is a disgrace. Spitting in the face of early adopters of oneDrive, photo-upload users and customers with windows phones. That’s it for me. I really wanted Microsoft to succeed because I liked the flawless integration of onedrive between phone and pc. But this is it. I will change to Android with my next phone. Endless TB is one thing, but to **** off all those people that just had 15GB for a few photos, documents and powerpoint… incredibly stupid.
Just found this headline online and think it says it really well: “Microsoft drops unlimited OneDrive storage after people use it for unlimited storage”. Well, goodbye!
If Backblaze’s accountants and engineers can provide cost-effective storage on an unlimited basis that can accommodate rare extremely heavy users, it makes one wonder why Microsoft cannot – and why the company apparently didn’t check the viability of offering unlimited storage before the offer was made!
One of the reasons using Windows Phone (user of WP7, 8.1 etc) was onedrive and free storage of 30GB, now going back to 5GB is really terrible news, and i am done with MS, this is goodbye from me to WP and MS, you can continue with your strategies.
Have you realized, MS knows what you store in Onedrive?
These news (Onedrive-Downgrade) are really bad news. What MS wants to so is logical. There must be other reasons… they way they tell us why they do so just doesnt make sense.
I bought a (very expensive) surface Pro and dont want to pay again to use it (e.g. with some larger OneNote-Files …)
I think we should leave – if possible
@MS: think again about what you do to the faithful users of the past
Anybody want to buy a Lumia? I selling mine, buy anything else, just not from a liar company…
Three Who’s questions, two already answered.
1) Who will take the most hit by this insane decision?
a) Microsoft customers, particularly those who invested in Windows hardware with auto-sync to OneDrive
b) All OneDrive users at large.
c) Microsoft itself, from utterly deserved backlash. (Remember? “We want to move from people needing Windows to choosing Windows to loving Windows. That is our bold goal with Windows.”)
2) Who will benefit the most by this decision?
a) Competitors
3) Now, inevitably the question is, Who conceived, proposed and fulfilled this change of policy? I hope his actions are scrutinized closely by whoever has the right to do so. And by closely, I mean suspiciously.
I just fell over my own stupidity^^ I said to someone considering paying for Office365 that he could aswell just put more than 5GB of data in OneDrive and get it for free 1-year… (it is in your FAQ) then i realised that it would be a minor betrayal to cancel that aswell compared to what you did already, can`t trust you.
MICROSOFT ARE YOU SERIOUS !
1++GB of photo,
1++GB of document,
1++GB of “WINDOWS APP PROJECT”, and the thing is creating a UWP needed 100MB++, I only got 0.5GB remain…I will pay for more storage if I can, but I’m still a student now…when I first use the SkyDrive, it still got 7GB which is enough for me, but now even worst then the beginning
Mobile First Cloud First….your mobile is slower than others now, but I still support it, and now you want to make a step back for the cloud, I’m very disappointed….cheating!
**** YOU PIECES OF **** **** YOU ALL TO ****… my entire mp3 collection gone **** YOU
ILL DELETE ALL MY MICROSOFT ACCOUNTS AND NEVER TOUCH A SINGLE MICROSOFT THING AGAIN
Microsoft not only cut its unlimited plans but also cut the free version plans from 15Gb to 5Gb!!!
What a rip off. Google provides 15gb for free. Dump Microsoft, no point in staying with them.
Their OneDrive team is run by an Idiot as far as i am concerned
I subscribe office 365 just for OneDrive Storage.
It’s time to move file into Google Drive.
Huge congratulations. Release this information before you start selling Lumia 950 and XL 950 can be only a marketing genius.
I thought this was a joke ! removing the free 15 Gb off Lumias ? are you trying to kill the phone already ? and what are we supposed to do with 5 Gb of storage ? if this goes real then Goodbye OneDrive !
Good bye Microsoft. Very very VERY disappointing.
Use mover.io to move from OneDrive to anything else. Microsoft can’t be trusted anymore..
Thats really a big sh….
Why we have to pay for just a view users?!
byebye
Wow, what a ******** move, Microsoft. Punish all your users due to some people exploiting the existing system. This is an extra reason to not pick a Windows Phone, like there weren’t so many already.
“some people exploiting the existing system”
I respectfully disagree with your assessment or their assessment. Microsoft sold, and marketed a “unlimited” feature, although, the consumer should not believe these types of marketing lies, its to me consumer fraud. Most products/services marketed as “unlimited” usually is consumer fraud or an attempt to defraud in my opinion. Getting rid of the marketing “unlimited” is actually a wise move, however, now its just simply a bait and switch strategy which to me is still consumer fraud. The consumer was only doing what they paid for i.e. unlimited usage. Don’t get fooled, Microsoft knew exactly what they were doing when they said “unlimited”.
As far as changing free accounts down to 5gb, I still think this is borderline consumer fraud, heck, as of late last night they were still marketing this on products in the Microsoft Store as 15gb plus 15gb (camera roll). Of course, what they are putting in place makes little sense to a existing Microsoft customer such as me, as I have a Surface Pro 3, a Windows Tablet running 10, a Windows Phone, and a Xbox 360, yet I would get the same storage limit to someone that owns a iPhone.
For the record, I don’t really use too much OneDrive, I am at less then a 1gb usage as I have a home NAS with 2tb. As far as their fee structures, it appears to be a push for existing free customers to bite the bullet and buy Office 365. I think that will back fire in a big way, time will tell. Of course, I haven’t even seen an option is for over 1tb yet. OneDrive for Business is a complete mess when I was working with it.
This is the equivalent of the Xbone announcements for the OneDrive team. OneThirdDrive = Xbone
“We want to move from people needing Windows to choosing Windows to loving Windows. That is our bold goal with Windows.” – Nadella October 2015
What a joke, more like “We want to move people from trying Windows, to get disappointed with OneDrive to hating Windows to never getting people to switch to Windows 10 Mobile…”
“Since we started to roll out unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 consumer subscribers, a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings.”
How did you come to this conclusion, did you go through people’s data in order to determine PC’s were being backed up and movie collections and DVR recordings? People’s private data?
Just wondering.
Lumia 950XL. Guess you should fix the false advertising on your Windows store now!
950XL – Free OneDrive cloud storage up to 30GB
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Microsoft-Lumia-950-XL–Unlocked/productID.326602300
[5] Get 15GB OneDrive storage when you sign-up with a new Microsoft account; get an additional 15GB free the first time you activate camera upload from your Lumia phone using the same Microsoft account. Limit: one 15GB OneDrive sign-up redemption and one 15GB camera upload redemption per Microsoft account. Internet and mobile fees apply.
Lumia 950XL. Guess you should fix the false advertising on your Windows store now!
Doesn’t seem very joined up.
So how do you share your photo and videos from your new 950 XL again ?
950XL – Free OneDrive cloud storage up to 30GB
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Microsoft-Lumia-950-XL–Unlocked/productID.326602300
[5] Get 15GB OneDrive storage when you sign-up with a new Microsoft account; get an additional 15GB free the first time you activate camera upload from your Lumia phone using the same Microsoft account. Limit: one 15GB OneDrive sign-up redemption and one 15GB camera upload redemption per Microsoft account. Internet and mobile fees apply.
Signed the petition just now, did you?
https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-give-onedrive-users-back-their-storage-options?recruiter=418578378&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
I use much less than 1TB, I am a paying customer and frankly 5x1TB for 10 bucks (family subscription) is still a very good deal compared to the competition. This move just breaks my confidence in the ‘new Microsoft’. I was starting to love to use Microsoft stuff from needing to use Microsoft stuff (I’m referring to what Satya Nadella said after those really impressive product demos). I’m starting to think Microsoft didn’t change at all, this behaviour is in their DNA so we just shouldn’t trust them.
I will switch to another cloud service if it’s confirmed, maybe Google or Hubic ?
Just cancelled my 360 subscription and I will make sure that I don’t recommend anyone to subscribe. I get to give a lot of “recommendations” as my job title is IT Manager. This betrayal can’t be fixed. I will never ever recommend Microsoft again even if you try to fix this **** up.
I will not sign any petition because this has hurt my trust in Microsoft. I will never trust Microsoft again with anything. Even if they “fix” this f-up.
I am trying to see this from Microsoft’s side because very few seem to be doing so.
They definitely made some errors in how they handled this situation but there has to be some good reasons for such a drastic move
I see one clue in the announcement.
They say if you are not happy with the changes that you can cancel and get some money back.
I am sure when they wrote they realized it meant they would lose some customers but think about it- the customers they would be losing were the ones that were upset because they were not getting something for nothing. In other words the customers that signed up for 360 not because they needed or even wanted it but because they found a cheap way to store their massive video collections (for example).
Any serious customer would not think twice about paying a few bucks per month to store their stuff.
I read many of the posts here and the majority are pi**ed because they took away the ‘free’.
I think the mistake MS made was that they should have made it a ‘limited time offer’ then they could change it and no one would have the right to complain.
That said- I am not totally sticking up for MS. They definitely messed up. I am a long time MS supporter and have had a Windows Phone since the beginning so I am surprised that with this change I am no better off than someone that has never used a MS product before.
Wow this is huge. I can’t get the new Lumia phone through Verizon AND I’m losing all my space on OneDrive. I just saw that my Zune music subscription (Zune to Xbox Music to now Groove) has also changed so I won’t be getting my free 10 songs a month you guys grandfathered me into since I’ve been a VERY loyal MS customer. I stood up for you guys about the Zune and was picked on in the school yard for it and this is how your treat me?
It doesn’t make any sense now to stick with you guys anymore. You’re a bully now and you have taken pretty much every reason why I would pay for any of your services or devices. It is sad, I really liked my Lumia Icon.
I ended my Xbox subscription and put the Xbox in a closet. I’ll hock my MS band at the pawn shop for bus fare, I’m moving out!
Bye Microsoft, it was good while it lasted but you’ve changed. I’m going to go my room now so I can sob using my MS certs as tissue paper.
Undo it
Admit you made a mistake
Make the options at least as good as the competition
Fire the guy that decided to do this
Move on…
AGREED!!!!
Thanks – we’ll be cancelling all our agency’s subscriptions!
Someone used 75TB of storage! We’d better save space by cutting users with 15GB…
Only yesterday I was telling my friend how he should stop using Google photos and switch to onedrive due to their liberal storage quota.. And now I feel both betrayed and stupid.
MS you definitely lost a brand ambassador today. Today I created a gmail account to evaluate Google solutions. I will slowly move away from MS ecosystem and will never recommend MS solution to anyone.
That’s really ********. Because of a minority using the service in a way you didn’t predict (duh!) you’re punishing the majority and severely degrading your service. And buy doing that you’re causing yourselves slip behind several competitors. It’s so dumb I doubt you have buy-in all the way to the top.
If you follow this through I’m out. Same goes for many other users I’ve recommended Office 365 to. And from now on I will not recommend OneDrive to new users. It doesn’t matter if they’re OK with 1 TB, it’s the fact that you’ve betrayed everyone you lured into using your OneDrive with unlimited storage.
Btw, I manage deployments of your cloud service to tens of thousands of enterprise users. Don’t think this doesn’t impact my view of you as a service provider for enterprise customers just because this change happens to be targeted and home users. You are Microsoft in both cases, be careful who you betray!
I am using a Lumia 640 device and all I can say is that I regret the buying decision.
I have no apps to use to Windows Phone 8.1, compared to Android.
This change made me to put my Lumia on sale and I will go back to Android.
I don’t want to hear about Microsoft and Lumia again!
I’m out. Strated transferring already. Can only ask everuone. Vote with your feet. Subcribe with others. Let them feel the damage as much as possible.
Cheers, Thomas
I can not believe. I migrated all the personal files to the onedrive, believed in service, convinced people to use and that’s what you do Microsoft, congratulations!
Dear Microsoft, why are you moving two steps backwards for every single step forwards? LiveMesh/ SkyDrive offered 25 GB, then OneDrive was reduced to 7 GB, later 15 + 15 GB including Photo Upload… “For a lifetime”, you always promised. Nowadays… 5 GB!? Seriously? C’mon, that’s absurd. You’re disappointing not only your loyal users to the limit. It’s a shame.
Too many comments so I doubt this one really matters any longer but I’ll try anyway.
I use OneDrive now and have for many years (when it was skydrive even) and enjoyed the service. I’m not a pro, or even a slightly heavy user, just a tech savvy home user. I currently have over 120gb available to me and I’m using 19gb. This is just normal photo backups from cell phone cameras and the like, I don’t even own a digital camera. I never use many of the more advanced features, I just like to have the photos I have backed up in case of disaster. It seems I will be losing this now, and that is sad I’m being impacted because of a few.
I work in IT and literally just purchased a business subscription for my company to dropbox over onedrive. I need stability in a product and dropbox is giving me nothing to worry about right now. So far dropbox is working great, will know better in a few days after using it more, and getting the needed office users in the new account.
I’m glad there are good options for me to move to, I’m not even mad like the others, but I am disappointed in the decision. This impacts my choice of MS both personally and professionally. At this time I am forced to go outside of MS for solutions that I used to think of MS first for. I feel this change was not well thought out by MS, but I will be able to find alternatives.
You will probably lose me as a paying Office 365 home subscriber over this. I’ve already got the office package through my Office 365 Business subscription at work and I am using OneDrive to both backup and sync my RAW photos and music.
With unlimited being off the table, and the largest plan being 1TB, there are better services out there like Amazon Cloud drive and gdrive
The whole reason I switched from dropbox to onedrive is the increased storage…..
this is a bait and switch. can’t call it anything else.
This is not what a multi-year loyal customer ever expected from Microsoft. I was rewarded with increased storage years ago for being a good customer and now they want to take it away because they noticed a small number of abusers. Why did they just not contact the extreme users and leave the rest of us as is? I cant believe that Microsoft made all these steps to drive cloud growth and then just stomps on loyal long term customers out of the blue. I am giving microsoft a few days to correct their oversight before I consider jumping to the G platform with all my family and customers. Its just a drag and drop to migrate to Google so what are they thinking? This has ticked me off so much I actually began considering formatting my personal PC and switching back to Linux after just going to Microsoft windows a year ago. I thought Windows 10 would be a turnaround for Microsoft but now I feel like they are just putting the screws to us all.
The CEO of MS is moving the entire company to WINDOWS AS A SERVICE. That means that its CLOUD based, which means more storage is needed for the average user. So, basically this goes against what their CEO said, plus with the release of their new phone which wont have any additional storage for the camera roll, will certainly add to disappointing sales. All the wrong things, all basically the opposite of what their CEO wants.
Is this a rebellion, or just opposite week!?!?
The CEO of MS is moving the entire company to WINDOWS AS A SERVICE. That means that its CLOUD based, which means more storage is needed for the average user. So, basically this goes against what their CEO said, plus with the release of their new phone which wont have any additional storage for the camera roll, will certainly add to disappointing sales. All the wrong things, all basically the opposite of what their CEO wants.
Is this a rebellion, or just opposite week!?!?
Wow. The only appeal of OneDrive to-date has been it’s generous storage allowance. It’s much slower and far more basic than DropBox. First we lost the tight integration to Windows via placeholders, now storage is draconian. There is nothing appealing left to this service.
It’s laughably tragic how often MS casually destroys what goodwill and loyalty it has accrued. It seems determined to remain the company we all love to hate.
I agree with pretty much everything you say here scott. The removal of placeholders in Win 10 was the first kick… now this.
I’ve been a Microsoft apologist for years. I told everyone who would listen how Windows Phone had the best interface of any phone I’d seen. Told them that with a bit of tweaking Windows 8.1 was actually quite good. I’ve spent the past 20+ years supporting users, and writing code for your products. Microsoft products have been pretty much the foundation of my career. But no more.
The past few years have been one head scratching mess after another. It’s almost as if the company has a mandate to alienate their customer base.
I sincerely feel for Microsoft’s employees. I once worked for a (previously) successful company that destroyed itself with highly heralded, yet utterly inept upper management. It’s not easy going in to work every day, wondering what bone headed move the senior VP’s are going to pull, that may eventually cost you your job.
I was under the impression that a company the size of MS would do it’s due diligence and only hire a CEO who actually understood his customer base. Apparently I was wrong. Linux here I come.
So disappointed by Microsoft’s behavior. Will they do the same for windows 10 later? Free now and charge later…
How can we trust MS now!
PETITION:
https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-give-onedrive-users-back-their-storage-options
SIGN this to send a clearer message to MS
Signed and shared.
Thanks much, and keep the share going!!!
I think it’s gone past that point. The old adage “It’s the thought that counts” applies here.
They could turn around and double the capacity tomorrow, but I’m still done with it. An empty PR inspired apology is really no apology at all.
As with many others, I love(d) the simplicity of OneDrive.
What I DON’T love is what we in the Army term as the ‘Blue Falcon.’ Look it up.
This sounds like a weak excuse to row back on a promise Microsoft could not deliver on. I’ve already had to downgrade from Windows 10 (due to its odd insistence on pushing driver updates along with software updates) and I’ve stopped using my Windows Phone 8 device and have went back to an Android device.
Thanks to this announcement, I am now making plans to take my OneDrive data elsewhere. Well done(!)
I’ve been a Microsoft apologist for years. I told everyone who would listen how Windows Phone had the best interface of any phone I’d seen. Told them that with a bit of tweaking Windows 8.1 was actually quite good. I’ve spent the past 20+ years supporting users, and writing code for your products. Microsoft products have been pretty much the foundation of my career. But no more.
The past few years have been one head scratching mess after another. It’s almost as if the company has a mandate to alienate their customer base.
I sincerely feel for Microsoft’s employees. I once worked for a (previously) successful company that destroyed itself with highly heralded, yet utterly inept upper management. It’s not easy going in to work every day, wondering what bone headed move the senior VP’s are going to pull, that may eventually cost you your job.
I also find it sadly ironic that the first time I tried to post this message, my new “best browser ever” (i.e. MS Edge) froze*, and I had to try again in Explorer.
*(As it does every time there is any significant lag on most sites.)
Man this sucks, I just moved a LOT of my friends and family from dropbox to onedrive. Now I have to either got back to dropbox (which didn’t give them enough space) or find a new solution. This is HOURS of my time wasted.
Please reconsider for the rest of us who DIDNT abuse this.
M**** **** can not be trusted, liars! next year we will pay for windows 10 ? 5gb free storage space? are you joking , your stupid mobile windows 10 and nokia phones will become the next blackberry!!!!! soon
May I suggest slight change on company strategy which may better communicate the principles – profit first, cloud and mobile second.
5GB does not equal “One”Drive. I’m going to need to set up something else now. Preferably with a company that doesn’t enjoy burning its bridges.
If the reason for this change is the abuse by the select few, why not just cut those people back? There is of course another reason at hand, as this change makes no sense with the reasons given. MS really knows how to shoot themselves in the foot.
Really MS?
Considering the direction you’re taking with Windows10, this is a very bad business decision?
Did you run it by Bill Gates by any chance? Not sure he’d agree…
See you later, im going over to the Big G!
This was the main reason, after looking at all the cloud drives, email solutions, phone operating systems and other things, I chose to go with outlook.com, and Microsoft in general. I discarded using other things and putting you guys first because of this. Sad to hear.
I have been a OneDrive user since the early SkyDrive days, and although I have been patient with the many changes to the service in that time (changing data thresholds and plans, the boneheaded decision to eliminate placeholders in Win10), I am nearing my limit with what I will accept from this company.
Please consider the following:
1) It is not my fault that you had to change your business model, and it is insulting that the official reason given for (yet another) OneDrive restructuring is that a minority of customers “abused” the system. This is dangerous language to use with paying customers, especially when most of us were lured to your service with promises of “unlimited” storage. I understand that some users are consuming more space than you expected, and that some of that data may be copyrighted, but these are issues are not the fault of the average, paying customer. If your marketing department sold more capacity than you can actually afford to provide, *just say that*. If some customers are storing content illegally, *enforce your EULA* and be done with them. But don’t blame the rest of us for *actually using* the very storage you sold us. I am amazed that a major corporation is stooping to such a childish excuse to initiate a pricing change. How did this damaging “message” get through your P.R. department?
2) Some people need more than 1 TB of space. Really. I currently use about 1.2 TB of OneDrive space, mostly for backing up photos, home videos, work projects, and some personal data. But I *have* around 2.6 TB of available OneDrive space, even if you discount the “unlimited” amount I actually pay for each month via my Office 365 subscription. Am I abusing my storage? You tell me. Or rather, don’t. I still have a full terabyte of unused storage, and that’s if you don’t include the “unlimited” amount your marketing department sold me on. Despite consuming well under any previous cap, I will soon be forced to drastically change my OneDrive usage. And the best part? I can’t buy enough from you! Even if I continue with Office 365 and am grandfathered into a 200GB plan, I will top out around 1.2 TB, which is exactly what I already use. So, if I choose to stay with you, I am already maxed out.
3) After leading the competition on price and storage versatility (and going to great effort to market your service as such), OneDrive is suddenly positioned among the most expensive and most restrictive. Is it also the most reliable and user friendly? Not in my experience. I used to chide my sister for relying on iCloud when she could have had so much more storage on OneDrive. “Sure,” I said, “the interface is a bit clunky, and it still crashes a lot, but check out this placeholder function.” Then you took that away. “Well, at least OneDrive is better on a MB/dollar basis.” Embarrassed again. “Hey, but at least my Windows phone has a perk over your iPhone … I get free photo storage.” Nope, gone. As of today, I can actually get better options from nearly all of your competitors, and I am seriously questioning my sanity for being loyal to your company this long.
(Disclosure, I was a huge Apple fanboy in the mid-90s before switching, so my judgement is suspect. Then again, people like me helped bring around Apple’s company’s resurgence in the early ’00s, so maybe it isn’t.)
If my reaction seems misplaced, understand that it is cumulative. Over many years, I have championed — and appeared foolish for championing various Microsoft products — Zune, Win7 Phone, Win8 Phone, Surface RT, and Win8.1 — all of which exhibited flashes of true brilliance, but which were executed poorly, poorly marketed and ultimately burned their customers badly. Seriously, there are reasons these products were market failures, and it wasn’t the customer’s fault.
Why dredge all of this up? Because it’s part of a greater picture. Microsoft can be a brilliant company that often provides brilliant (and cost-effective) solutions for its paying customers. It is also a company that frequently takes its customers for granted and appears to constantly chase new opportunities in lieu of sticking with well-conceived products and making them work. I understand we operate in a fast-moving world, and that the opinions of a single user in a single market is practically meaningless. I also understand that companies must follow profits and reconfigure their businesses to take advantage of market opportunities in rapidly changing circumstances.
People talk. The “recalibrated” OneDrive customer at home might also be the woman who makes decisions about cloud storage at her company. The MS fan who has been repeatedly burned for advocating MS products, might start actively warning friends, family and colleagues against those products, not out of animosity, but out of an understanding that the company is unreliable. Trust is a real thing. It is a cumulative reward, and it can’t be bought. It can be destroyed very quickly with poor communication, poor follow-through and arrogance.
Since I’ve presumptuously shared my criticisms with you, I’ll also state what I want. I doubt I’m alone in this. So please: Develop, and pursue rigorously, a coherent mobile, PC and cloud strategy that is cost-effective and flexible to user needs. Delight your consumer and enterprise customers with solutions that work across a variety of home and work environments. Become the company whose products people want to use constantly, not just because I have to, but because people love them.
Finally, and this is possibly the most important point: Understand that you are not in the leadership position anymore, and that you can no longer offer middle-of-pack solutions and charge as much or more than your (often superior) competition. Android and Apple are real options, even for a die-hard like me.
So why do you keep giving me reasons to leave, instead of reasons to stay?
VERY well put. I agree with all that you said.
And want to add, that how can they punish even the people that “abused” their system, when it was Microsoft that offered UNLIMITED!!!!!?????
Boggles the mind how in one hand they hold out the olive branch, only to slap your face with the other hand when you take that olive branch.
I agree. I have also promoted MS products and services at work and with friends. I’m a shareholder too. Their inability to manage this change is shocking. The people who are angry now are some of their most loyal customers. People just recently toned down their hate for MS, and now in one mindless swoop they alienated some of their best customers. As a customer I’m ******, as a share holder I want to see this properly managed.
Really? The company spend billions of dollar to buy Nokia for nothing, and now try to cut off the service quality? So, what’s next?
Why don’t just try to limit the user who over uses the services? I have office 365, although the space is more than sufficient for me, I don’t want MS to take the space it promised to the uses.
Or I have to say the so called infinite space is just a lie at the beginning!
Don’t offer “Unlimited” if you don’t plan to follow through (aka good customer service anywhere, ever, in the history of capitalism). That said, if you have problems with a few customers, don’t punish all others for the incidents of a few (see T-Mobile’s stance on data over-users). I was planning on paying the yearly subscription $$ for the use of 1-5TB spread out over time.
I thought in 2015 maybe MS had already learned these salient points especially after the new leaf of the qualitatively superior product in Windows 7, but now I’m disinclined to believe communication has really changed for the giant behemoth of a company in recent years. Products are good, but customer service can seal the deal.
/rant and now here’s my important point:
I have ~700GB of data on OneDrive that took 2 weeks to sync. I will be removing my data. I will not be using OneDrive ever again because of MS’s re-nig on the product promise. In addition, I’ll be extremely skeptical of any product offerings from MS including Windows releases (which have their own tropes and mis-steps; a topic for another day entirely). You can and should do better for your customers, MS. Sincerely, one ****** off consumer.
Onedrive went from 1st to worst in a single blog post!
Well, they have certainly stepped in it this time. It was all over the media that they are taking away what was promised. The initial announcement got nowhere near that coverage.
What genius signed off on this decision.
From 30 gb to 5 gb? Ok. Going to dropbox.
Really Microsoft? Really? You go from making your cloud storage proposition one of the best (if not the best) for casual users, then abruptly make it one of the worst, just as you’re launching products like Office 2016 which have a huge online collaboration aspect? Onedrive is pretty good right now and I love being able to edit office documents online. However, I end up doing most collaboration in google drive because so few people have microsoft accounts. Now, they have even less reason to get an account, meaning that I’ll likely continue using google’s products, not yours. Even from a business perspective, this makes no sense.
Please start backtracking now!
First of all: we had a contract that you’re now breaching. Secondly: you just lost a customer. Your cloud storage option just went from good to substandard; why on earth would anyone but the dumbest users stay with OneDrive?
Shame on you Microsoft. This is a blunder that you will not recover from. In the past (I have worked in IT for 15 years, and am in charge of a 5500 user Office365 deployment), I have always actively supported and been a vocal proponent of Microsoft services.
Let me be clear here:
This change does not affect me at all regarding my personal or business OneDrive accounts, as my personal OneDrive has 140GB via referral, loyalty, Groove Music Pass, etc – and will thus end up being 125GB when you make this change – which still leaves me with plenty of storage. My business OneDrive account will still have its 1TB of storage (unless you failed to inform correctly regarding Office 365 for Education), but again, it would not affect me much.
Where this incredibly absurd decision is going to be your undoing: You made me a liar, and tarnished my professional image. As I said, I have been vocally supportive of your ecosystem and capabilities for many years. I will be actively voicing my concerns about your anti-trust actions here, to ALL 5500 employees, and I will also be seriously considering cancelling our Office 365 for Education agreements – and in doing so, will be forced to identify to all staff, parents and students the reason for our shift away, and that it is our serious concern that Microsoft has failed to meet the standard of trust we expect from our vendors. We may not be a large school division, but our patronage generally (85% or better) listens and heeds our recommendations. Considering that they can also see the reactions of everyone on this blog, they will be heeding this recommendation as well.
Being that this just occurred, and you (as a company) obviously had a major and collective brain ****, I will hold off until the end of this calendar year, to give you ample time for the collective brain **** to clear the air. If you still have failed to restore my faith in your trustworthiness by reversing the decision to destroy the free offering, I will proceed with my recommendation.
wow totally agree, it is more a mater of trust and now for even me its gone where microsoft is concerned.
I work as a network admin for a school district as well. Currently we use Google’s services for e-mail and cloud storage. We where looking at moving to office 365 for education but now they don’t even match what Google is willing to give us for storage. We have unlimited storage from google and the ability to upload files that are 5TB in size (see the provided screenshot) http://goo.gl/oLwn2s
So at this time and especially after these decisions moving their cloud services back not forward I will not be moving out school district and their 10,000+ users to Office 365 and I will recommend to everyone I see that they stop using their services.
Onedrive will lost clients. Google drive has free fotos storeg unltimted. Outlook no longer will be an option. Goog by Microsoft. 15 gigabytes of free space realy? This is a downgrade. Microsoft is lost.
Your original product specs created so much good will. I am sure the average storage is well below expectations. What troll decided to make up this policy?
FIrst they say come as early subscriber and get 15 and now they say we take it away. great. I don’t see the point here, as described heavy users are using another service. Well, 5 is enough for my use so far.
As has been noted by others, it’s impossible to “abuse” a system when you are following the rules. Microsoft knew that some people would use a lot of storage but they wanted to be able to say they offered “unlimited” space. They knew this “problem” was inevitable.
The worst part is the spin. This is an anti-customer move that provides no benefits to anyone except the short-term goals of Microsoft. In the long run, it will probably hurt Microsoft as well.
Microsoft…..think about this…..the people that are expressing their opinion RIGHT NOW are the Microsoft people that are keeping up with the products and technology and as you read the comments actually switched to one drive from something else…that’s why we are reading this OneDrive blog. Don’t blow this! What a valid point that was made about the Nokia buyout…..5 billion was it that you just wrote off? What about investing another 5 billion into storage. You have a wonderful free service that I as a #1 MS fan loves to promote. I just recently changed over multiple people on their iPhone from iCloud to OneDrive for their backup and collaboration needs. I can’t recommend you if your not a option due to a low quota. Everyone has at least a 16GB phone……your taking yourself out of the game when it comes to free advertising the Microsoft name by removing the OneDrive icon from everyone’s iPhone/android because you will no longer be a viable option.
If that is your intention….stop giving away free space then that is very classless and shows greed on your part. How much money did you invest on the windows 10 logo………I mean really….I love your throwing money on your products…I love your really making them shine and putting time and money into new stores…..and when you give XXGB free and it was more than competitors then it looks as if your putting time and money into people. That’s a good thing Microsoft. But now……just looks like all you care about is your product and if you don’t have people using your product then it will just be another write off.
This decision to hurt paying customers, with good will toward Microsoft, is so short sighted.
I wonder how many of the 365 users are also, surface owners (or future), students, academics etc.
I use 3TB. 1TB alone for my complete photo collection in RAW. Huge data sets for research. All my music in FLAC. All my 1080p video from my camera. Large portable install for all my win10 machines (portableapps).
Not even giving an option to pay for more TB? Now I should just move the photos to Amazon (free for RAW NOW).
Onedrive is no longer “one” place you can store/backup everything.
I was amazed when I heard the news last October about unlimited OneDrive storage with an Office 365 subscription. I signed up the day after the announcement, with the unlimited storage being the primary reason. I already had paid for an old style Office license, but this seemed like something I wanted to support. I bought a Surface Pro 3, and started recommending MS to my friends and colleagues. I became an ambassador. And now this ? To go from unlimited to 1TB for a customer that relied on a major company to offer what it said ? I cancelled other cloud backup plans because I wanted to go all in with MS.
I’m an amateur photographer, and while not at one TB yet, I plan to be over that in a year or so. But I can’t trust MS to grow with me. I bought into the ‘unlimited as long as you have Office 365′ ********, which you had to have known was a complete and utter lie. In good faith how could you have even offered this on your web site as recently as last week ?Does this feel right to you ? Does your company have a code of ethics ? Bait and Switch is typically not viewed as ethical.
You’ve lost my trust. You’ve embarrassed me. You’ve made me look like a fool to my friends.
Who the **** is running the show there ? You roll out the new SP4 and Surface Book’s to wide accolades. You are getting ready to launch the new Office suite with cloud collaboration as a key feature. And then you neuter the One Drive service. Just Brilliant.
What you’ve lost is my trust. How do I know you won’t ransom-ware my Windows 10 license ? How do I know you won’t drop the number of supported installs with my O365 subscription with no notice ? Why would any company or individual trust you with cloud storage after this ?
It’s embarrass really. I had become a huge MS advocate. I see no reason to be one anymore.
We were in the process of moving our entire office over to Office 365. MS just torpedoed that. No way we are going to do it after this debacle. I doubt anyone will ever reach the 1TB they now offer, but this removal of services leads to mistrust on what else they may decide to charge extra for in the future.
I will also say Amazon offers unlimited storage for $60 a year. Its a good option for anyone wanting to jump off this sinking ship.
When I saw “unlimited space” I realized that marketing at Microsoft ran amok. Perhaps, they looked at how many people added more data when free space went from 7GB to 15GB, and thought there weren’t many.
What marketing didn’t understand and technical guys didn’t comprehend is there always a point when more quantity brings new quality.
Unlimited storage space coupled with very fast home broadband brings new crop of users, those who wouldn’t come for 15GB offering. You can’t backup modern computer to 15GB storage, for example, but to 1 TB+ – yes, you can. So, someone will write backup app and offer it to masses.
Someone else could use that space for DVR. My home DVR with local 1TB drive is often 70% full, for example. I would not even bother if “Cloud DVR” offered me 15GB space, but 1TB+ – now you are talking. So, another app will be coming to do that.
Now comes realization that “unlimited space” costs more than expected. So, we now see finance guys run amok and quite likely top management telling marketing to just shut the f… up. So they do.
Lesson for businesses, large and small: think big picture when you offer something dramatically different, or you will fail. You new customers will leave you and your old loyal user base will feel betrayed. Which is never good for business.
Goodbye OneDrive – Hello Google Drive!
Why punish the 99%+ of users when it’s <1% that are abusing the "unlimited" space?
Sou you ****** up onedrive and make it unusable for most people, instead of pursuing only those abusing it, bravo. 5 Gb is still good for my documents, but for Photos it is just not enough, you jist gave away your repoutation.
1. I went Lumia 920 to Lumia 830 and planning on getting the 950 when it comes out – not any more, backing up my camera roll photos automatically would definitely take me over the new 5GB limit. Android still has better options, so thanks for another Windows Phone kick in the groin but I’m gone! Mr. Nadella, if you want to kill the Windows Phone just say so, it would make it much easier for everybody.
2. From 30GB (15 free, 15 camera roll) to 5GB in one fell swoop, there are lots of better options out there that actually want users.
3. To present this as focusing on “productivity and collaboration” is an insult to all your customers!
4. Since you’re limiting the functionality of my Windows Phone with this, how can you say “These changes are needed to ensure that we can continue to deliver a collaborative, connected, and intelligent service. They will allow us to continue to innovate and make OneDrive the best option for people who want to be productive and do more.”? You are seriously helping me be more productive by limiting the functionality I can get from my phone? Brilliant!
5. Conspiracy theory or not, promising “free” and then reneging casts a huge shadow over your Windows 10 “free for Windows 7 and 8 users” approach. When people say that in one or two years time you will charge monthly/annual fees for Windows 10 they now have some ground to stand on.
If your real purpose is losing your users congratulations, you’re well on your way! All the good will you’ve accumulated in the past few years is slowly being washed away.
And you wonder why so many people use pirated microsoft products? This is a huge reason to be mad at microsoft and another reason to pirate office because there is no advantage in buying it. Just use google drive and be fine.
As countless others have pointed out, this is one of the most absurd and anti-consumer decisions I have seen in ages. So, because a handful of people abuse the system, rather than simply putting caps on the amount of data that can be used by the abusers, you decide to cut space for ALL users?
The main reason I’m on OneDrive is because I have the 15GB free, plus 15GB camera bonus, plus 10GB loyalty bonus, for a total of 40GB. If that is getting cut way down, I no longer have any reason to use OneDrive, as other services offer more and better features.
But, I think the main reason this really ****** me off is because the reasoning providing is so clearly ********. This is not an effort to move to “productivity and collaboration.” I just recently installed Windows 10 on my laptop and my wife’s laptop, and Windows 10 is VERY focused on trying to encourage you to store EVERYTHING in OneDrive. You are encouraged to store all your documents, all your photos, and all your videos on OneDrive for the stated purpose of having your stuff available anywhere at any time.
By cutting all users back to only 5GB of data, you are ensuring that almost NOBODY can actually store “ALL” their stuff in OneDrive without paying for extra space. If this was the structure from the beginning, that might be acceptable, but to change course at this point and actually strip people of promised space is anti-consumer, and I will not be supporting such a company.
There is literally ZERO reason to use OneDrive over Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or even Amazon at this point.
It’s one thing to shoot yourself in the foot with a pistol; this is akin to taking a machine gun and having at it for several hours.
I think MS need to restructure their offering.
Provide OneDrive as the relevent storage and mechanism connecting their offerings for Office, Windows xx and Phone.
Then offer an entirely separate offering in the same guise as gDrive, DropBox, etc with whatever limits and billable addons as the market requests.
The entire issue here is the team that decided to turn OneDrive into something it technically could not be.
We can’t moan about losing ‘free stuff’ but we can question the intelligence and due dilligence of the OneDrive team.
If only they could make up their mind, and keep programs for more than a few months. While it has some drawbacks, at least the One drive sync client worked reasonably well, and certainly better than the One drive for Business. We keep trying the Onedrive for Business and Sharepoint forced on us as part of Office 365 Business, but run into never ending syncing issues, stupid limits on the number of files, etc. It is really a shame that this issue is such a big part of the Office 365 promise, but the reality is the promise is not met.
Again, Microsoft Onedrive, quite changing your mind, and quite making promises you can not keep.
How about you stick to what you promised? For me is this last nail to coffin for windows phone. I won’t be buying 950, where would i backup the photos? On google drive? I fought long enough with this platform, but i’m getting tired of explaining myself to everybody around. I will now stop to suggest you as alternative, because frankly you take one step forward and two back.
that is exactly how I feel. If I cant trust MS to keep their word when I have abused nothing and been unbelievably patient ref Windows phone, there is no reasons left to stay.
minerals as well as other nutrients and maintain a healthy human diet.
Hit the CRACK PIPE a little hard today, didn’t you?
loyalty goes both ways, consumers are not corporations we take it personally when you gift something and then steal it back like a thief in the night.
I never used much space, but knowing it was there made staying in the windows world a good option. But between the dearth of apps, the lack of mobile phone options, and moves like this, I really feel it is time for me to move myself and my family to the google world. At least we will have access to apps.
So the problem stated here is that some people using the paid Office 365 are using excessive storage.
You solution is to reduce storage for everyone instead of capping the Office 365 storage at 10 or 5 or whatever.
This does not add up.
Decreeing the free option from 15 to 5 means that 7,500 are paying for that 1 guy using too much, and that assumes those people are all using the full 15GB, but they are not. By your own math if the 75TB user is using 14000 time the average, that makes the average 5.35GB. SO you are impacting 215,000 people (by average) for 1 person.
Im losing 10 GB of my storage because some random guy thought unlimited meant unlimited?
Wow. Goodbye microsoft. I should have listened to my nephew when he said to avoid everything microsoft produces.
Thanks Microsoft. You have made me look like an idiot for recommending you to friends and family. I now have to either:-
a) Inform them they now need to pay for their storage
or
b) Move people to Google.
Have a wild stab in the dark and guess which option I’m going for? The 950XL I was waiting for won’t be my next phone either. Absolutely staggering and baffling decision.
I can understand taking away unlimited, others have tried this before and failed but then maybe set the cap at 5 or 10 TB instead of “just” 1 TB like it was before it was unlimited.
And for the other changes that has nothing to do with the extreme unlimited cases, that is nothing other than Microsoft being greedy and seeing an opportunity to squeeze money out of people (like the old Microsoft I used to know). I really felt Microsoft had moved beyond trying to squeeze money out of people just because they can and not because the service actually costs them something.
Microsoft you’re not fair with your users. You’ll lose a lot of them.
Wow, Microsoft is really stupid. Goodbye OneDrive.
Wow… disappointed… just disappointed.
And the one environment across different platforms was just starting to gain a little foot hold.
You will not only lose current customers but you will deter future customers with this fool hardy plan.
Don’t be tricked into discussing a few bad apples ruining it for everyone. MSFT mentioned the high 75TB user to distract you and set their context. Ignore the Red Herring. This is about the OS, Mobile and app teams operating without a rudder and Windows Phone-minded mentality running the OS division without needed maturity.
MS could isolate the miscreants without affecting the rest. That’s not the issue. The real issue is whether you can trust Microsoft, whether to stick to their promises, protect your privacy or allow you to decide which OS you should run.
.
After giving us extra space to backup all pictures from our phone to the cloud (especially as a bonus for supporting the Windows Phone platform); after integrating it into the Windows OS to make it easy to keep files in sync across all our Windows machines; after building in a “music locker” feature to stream our music anywhere with Groove; after adding the simple checkbox to let us upload our Xbox clips and screenshots from the Xbox One; after building all these services and encouraging us to use them, you’re now crippling all of those services by bringing the limit crashing down to less free space than I have on my phone. And why? Because “a small number of users” are abusing the service? This is beyond disappointing; it’s downright insulting.
really!!!! this is insane!! i have all my pics of my family and every one up there.. you guys really sucks!!!
you guys really treat us like ****!!! are you trying to lose your customers!!!!
How about notifying customers directly rather than waiting for them to find out through media and this blog? My Office 365 subscription renews in a few days, and had I not been paying attention, I would not have know I needed to cancel. Goodbye, promise-breaking, no trust building, customer-unfriendly Microsoft! Unlimited storage was the key selling point for me for OneDrive. Now that it’s gone, there is no more selling point to make OneDrive any more appealing than Dropbox or Google.
Add me to the chorus of people that understand removing the Unlimited option, but is furious about the other reductions, especially since existing users are not grandfathered in.
tk
I will likely have to move to Google entirely. And will be advising my friends and family to do the same. Google Docs can do much of what Office does for the regular person. And you get twice the storage for the same price. Not to mention a better ecosystem overall.
I try to support Microsoft when I can, but this is simply a head scratcher move by MS.
You are making a bad move. do not punish your base for the actions of a few. adjust and make customers love you. This is now how you win, this is how you lose. By now you should realize you made a mistake. Make it right. place a high cap, double what it was. be awesome. be your competitor’s nightmare, not their friend.
What a stupid move… if you go ahead with this me, my family and my business are going to DropBox – which at the moment has a superior product anyway.
Seriously – have you guys been doing drugs? Because that’s about the only explanation for announcing something this crazy. This doesn’t make any sense – you’ve made your competitors’ lives very easy, especially Google’s.
Seriously. If you had told us the free storage was temporary, it would be alright. Now taking that away for no good reason, isn’t alright. Maybe you’re thinking we can’t complain because it’s free – and you may be right, but consider that a considerable amount of people who take advantage of that free storage have Windows Phones – so, you know, they’re actually supporting a platform that, by all measures, is dying. Those people put up with a lot of **** to help YOU make money and make a dent in the mobile hardware market.
Then there are those who paid for Office 365, and many of them only paid as much as they did because of all the extras it included, the unlimited storage on OneDrive in particular. And you advertised it as “UNLIMITED”. So why do you punish them for using the service as advertised?
Sure, I know – there’s probably a lot of pirated content on your servers, and no company wants that. But there has to be a better way of dealing with that than punishing all users.
I only backup the files I create to OneDrive – and I’m being downgraded from 40Gb to 5Gb. That’s 8 times less – that’s insane! It’s not my fault other people are potentially doing illegal things with your service – that’s a risk inherent to any sort of cloud storage service.
And because of all that, the 15Gb of free storage in Gmail is looking pretty good right now…
Canceled my Office 365 membership. I only had it for the insane OneDrive storage. Office was just a perk but I don’t really need anything more than Google Docs. With this crippling of OneDrive it is now worth no more to me than the competition. So long, Microsoft. It was.. okay… while it lasted.
I really do not understand how Microsoft thinks to get away with this.
I used to be a fan of Microsoft, but since my Windows Phone 7.5 was not upgradeable to 8, my Surface RT couldn’t be used with Windows 10, my Lumia 1520 will very late (or not?) get an upgrade to Windows 10, Half of my already existing music collection when transferred to OneDrive by XBox Music (now Groove) got a DRM protection without warning and I suddenly can not play them anymore on all of my devices, now my OneDrive space will be taken away???!? This is the reason why I got an Office 365 subscription besides me already having bought(!) 5(!) Office licenses (for my home PC’s – who does that besides me???).
The placeholder files disappeared from OneDrive already, now this.
@Microsoft: you don’t understand, do you? How much space and reasons do you want to give, even to your fans, to dislike you???!!!
No one will read this. Less likely the One Drive team.
Everyone is focused on the wrong issue here. This isn’t about punishing users. That’s a thin veil to the actual reason. A 75TB user is a scapegoat. The real reason, is the same tactic Microsoft employed with removing the start menu code from Windows 8: Services.
Microsoft wants to push hard to get you to use their Office365 monthly subscription. This move isn’t because of bad users. It’s carefully crafted to push you into a locked plan per month. Windows 10 is heavily tied to OneDrive. Look at the post install steps. It pushes OneDrive at you hard. Use Windows 10 Metro Office apps Word, Excel and OneNote? They push the OneDrive storage. Use pictures? It pushes OneDrive storage.
See where this is going? If you need the space, a $6.99 a month or $9.99 a month subscription doesn’t sound to bad for 1TB. Why work the cow when the milk is free? The unlimited is even less the issue here…its the justification of removing the lower tiers and dropping the free tier to force the upgrade to Office365. In fact, it almost smells like this was on purpose from the beginning.
Windows 8 did the same thing. I knew the reason the moment the announced removing the start menu code from Windows. At the time, Windows Phone was released and Microsoft wanted those projected dollars from the App Store revolution. What better way to have people buy Windows Phone than to force users to use the Windows 8 tile screen. People enjoy the familiar. At the time, the thought was very much “If they have Windows 8 and forced to use the tile screen, when they go to buy a phone, it will look familiar and buy our phone, they buy more apps, we get more developers, we get more money, more control, more users, etc”. Solid theory…only, people like choice. Windows 8 forced it and removed the ability, like all windows versions before it, to go back to the start menu of Windows 7/Vista. Removing the code was a clear indicator to prevent easy hacks to put the start menu back, delaying further new programs to replace it. This failed attempt, and the damage it brought, was the end of Sinofski and Balmer.
Microsoft, you might fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you’ll never fool all the people all the time.
As for me? This is the latest sign that Microsoft of the 90’s is back with better tricks to use their monopoly powers against consumers. Satya is no fool folks. This is a great plan, because it isn’t as customer facing as Windows or Office. Notice how the push for iOS, Android and OS X office was, and why it gets attention even before their own Windows Phone? Simply answered, its where the users are and the money can be made with Office365 services. For the informed like us here on this blog, spread the word:
The Real Microsoft, is back.
I think you’re spot on – the fact that this post has comments enabled, and the comments are not being moderated indicates that Microsoft expected the negative comments/feedback and that they don’t care about people threatening to move to a competitor. The decision has been made, and they’re going to stick with it.
They’re essentially telling everyone that they want (only) paying customers, and people who want free stuff can go join the competitor (aka get scroogled, or equivalent to the other competitors they want to move to).
I do hope you are wrong, Rubix – even though I have to admit that everythings looks quite suspicous…
Goodbye!
The headline “In pursuit of productivity and collaboration”.
BS.
It is pure punishment. I was enjoying the seamlessness of backing up my photos on my iPhone’s OneDrive app and having them redownload on my Windows 10 PC for offline storage. I’ve now backed up two major vacations in this manner, and won’t have access to all my memories as you’re punishing me for others that have abused the system. I was happy to use this product as an alternative to flickr, Google Photos, and many more. You have made this product both obsolete to me and noncompetitive, all in the spirit of “productivity and collaboration”.
Sadly, will be looking for alternatives now. Really loosing any faith I have left in MS.
I think I’ve finally realized the real meaning of “cloud first, mobile first” – you’ve already killed your mobile (first), and you’re now going to kill your cloud (storage).
So what’s next? Windows 10, with your lifetime “free” upgrade option? Something like – “Due to a few users ‘abusively’ applying newer updates to their windows 10 on the same hardware over and over, we’ve restricted the ability to use such machines for any 3 hrs during a 24-hour period so that you can enjoy any remaining UWP apps still available that might eventually sync up with OneDrive. This will help you be more productive in those 3 hrs, while we continue to innovate many android launchers.”
I can not believe it! Why do you do that????
DISAPPOINTED!!!
Absolutely the wrong decision. I can no longer recommend this as I have been doing for some time. What a joke.
As a lifetime Mac user, OneDrive was the one product that had really started pulling me into the Microsoft ecosystem. I had been using the free version and then went to 365 and have been using Word and Outlook on my Mac. I will be needing a new laptop at the end of the year, and for the first time in my life was considering Windows with the Surface Book.
If Microsoft can take back on a product like OneDrive, they can do so on 365 and I wouldn’t be surprised if the pundits weren’t correct and Windows 10 will move to an annual subscription fee.
I almost made a terrible mistake, thanks for firing the warning shot in time!
Hi OneDrive Team,
have a look at the OneDrive uservoice page:
http://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/10524099-give-us-back-our-storage
Please don’t work against your fan boys/girls, MS customers and all of your colleagues in the other MS departments. Many other MS departments are customer focused and they help to bring a better image to MS. And you OneDrive Team? You destroy all this work of your colleagues!
Stop the work against customers, fan boys/girls and other MS teams!
Hi OneDrive Team,
have a look at the OneDrive uservoice page:
http://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/10524099-give-us-back-our-storage
Please don’t work against your fan boys/girls, MS customers and all of your colleagues in the other MS departments. Many other MS departments are customer focused and they help to bring a better image to MS. And you OneDrive Team? You destroy all this work of your colleagues!
Stop the work against customers, fan boys/girls and other MS teams!
My first impression was “are you kidding me???”. I did not believe first, thought it to be a fake news, as it was too lame a move from Microsoft. I am one of the few species on earth who still own Lumia phones and was looking forward to own 950XL. I really liked the feature of auto backing up on onedrive, but if they cap that limit, why the heck I take pain in owning microsoft phone??? What is your differentiating factor??
I am hardcore Microsoft fan and I am really surprised and saddened by this move. Hope Satya Nadella is reading the comments and take corrective action.
How about this for some ********. You guys are still selling the 100 and 200gb plans that you’re discontinuing? Holy ****.
So basically you are making Onedrive obsolete and irrelevant. So much for ‘Cloud first’
So, by “unlimited” you actually meant “limited”??
It doesn’t matter, I never took you seriously to begin with. I know better than to rely on MSFT for something as critical as my data or my email. I use Google and Dropbox, and although I do use Windows, Cortana and all its “privacy” features are permanently turned off.
Its actually nice to be reminded every once in a while why I don’t like Microsoft…
This is insane! Bullies! Traitors! How can we ever trust Microsoft?
This is just part of a grand strategy from some “Clever” accountant thinking that we are nothing but a bunch of idiots who are going to believe in their excuse about a 75TB user…
Microsoft has been attracting people to OneDrive with the promise of a cheap cloud storage option, now that we are trapped they tell us the only option left is to buy Office 365… I am not going to fall for this. I don’t need it, I will never need it.
I’m voting with my feet… bye bye… I need to replace my PC I like windows but I’ll buy a Mac.
Mobile FIRST, CLOUD FIRST! THEY SAID
Very smart move Microsoft, a good way to kill a nice service. You guys should at least kept the Camera Roll bonus. 5GB?
I’m an Android user who was considering moving to Windows Phone due to the great OneDrive PC – App- sync, but now i guess i will remain in Android. At least Google store my pictures, for free, with no limitation, and gives a 15gb on Drive.
It was nice meeting and using you Onedrive. You will be missed.
Google stores your images downscaled. So they lose the original resolution. So it’s not ‘without limitations’.
I’m not agreeing with the OneDrive decision, I’m just also disagreeing with your statement.
I used to recommend OneDrive over DropBox and Google Drive. With the free tier falling so far, I can’t honestly do that anymore.
Also, nixing camera roll means I won’t be using my personal account anymore. Moving to Google.
http://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/10524099-give-us-back-our-storage
It’s a shame, but Evernote was forced to back off its “unlimited quota” promises and impose a 10GB/month upload quota when premium users started backing up their entire machines to the service. Nearly every study done on online storage habits among the “average” user (Microsoft has done one, Apple has done one, Google has probably done one) indicate that the typical user stores less than 5 GB online.
As far as all the people who hate this decision, there are already well-established online backup services (both paid and free) like Carbonite and others that you should be using to back up your machines instead of OneDrive, GoogleDrive, Dropbox, Box.com, etc., so get a freakin’ grip.
That said, as I’m on Android and Chromebook devices and a Mac at home, I’ve already moved to a paid Google Apps account for email and documents (I do 90% of what I need online anyway, and Google Docs files do not count against Google Drive quotas) and I’ll be getting the prorated refund for the Office 365 I no longer need.
Forgot to add that such backup services are cheaper than OneDrive and others (I believe Carbonite is ~$50 a year for unlimited backup of one machine)
Steven –
With due respect, I could give a rats rear end what the average user’s data store size is. What I care about (and most others here) is that what Microsoft sold.
Let’s be abundantly clear here: UNLIMITED.
I disagree with everyone here who says things like “I understand limiting the Unlimited storage to 1 TB…”. Bull! I do NOT understand it. It is not possible to abuse an unlimited resource and if unlimited wasn’t what Microsoft intended, it shouldn’t have ever used that terminology and sold its product with that language as a qualifier. If they meant “effectively unlimited but limited to 10 TB”, so be it, say that.
The fact is: they didn’t.
I formerly worked for Microsoft, have lived and breathed the company for years, have sold millions of dollars worth of their software, support, and consulting services. I’ve engineered systems that implement their technology for decades, have written significant components of the Windows kernel, and never in the history of my experience with the company have I seen a bait-and-switch like this. This is astounding to me.
The product they sold was not only qualified as unlimited, it is/was also billed as *the* destination for storing Pictures, Videos, Music, Documents, Spreadsheets, etc. They actively encourage people to store and stream media from those libraries. It’s also used as a repository, though hidden from the user, as a store for personal settings and backups of Windows Phone app lists and settings/profiles from Windows 10. So the notion that somehow people need to “get a freakin’ grip”, as if their interpretation of what OneDrive was intended to do and advertised to do is out of line with reality is absolutely ridiculous and disingenuous.
The reduction in the free levels of storage is troubling, absolutely no question. And I believe the plan tiers and sizes Microsoft has chosen are woefully inadequate for their intended audience and use. For those that paid for advertised services, 1 TB is too woefully inadequate. In 2015, it is hardly out of the ordinary to have in excess of 1 TB of data – especially in the era of 1080p/4k video and high-end audio. We live in a media age and 1 TB doesn’t cut it, especially when what was sold to customers was “Unlimited”.
Had Microsoft realized that what they sold was rapidly growing faster than they could effectively scale their service offering at, they should’ve simply said so. Very few people here would have a problem if the following happened:
1. Free storage levels, camera bonuses, loyalty bonuses etc. were left in tact.
2. Users of “Unlimited” plans were allowed to keep their current storage levels plus 5% more as their max growth barrier.
3. The “Unlimited” plan was eliminated and restructured as a 1 TB plan with the option to purchase more storage as necessary in either 100 GB, 500 GB, or 1 TB blocks.
There are thousands of other ways to compromise and produce a similar offering that wouldn’t have blamed users, resulted in a PR nightmare, and broken the trust of thousands (if not soon to be millions) of loyal Microsoft users and best of all, would have resulted in a manageable infrastructure for Microsoft.
Hey MS, if you want to talk about productivity, you should make synchronization better first, before you care about the cost for running huge storages.
Smart move guys, look what you did to the MSFT Stock:
http://www.thestreet.com/story/13349859/1/how-will-microsoft-msft-stock-react-to-reduced-cloud-storage-plans.html
I think Satya is very happy about this…
That’s BS. You advertised Onedrive as unlimited and now you realized that a lot more people are using it as unlimited storage than you anticipated. After all the good moves you made this just sucks.
Go ahead and support this petition
https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-give-onedrive-users-back-their-storage-options
1200+ comments, I don’t remember that much comments one any MS blog posts!
I greatly appreciate the stated goal with this petition, but lets be candid.
Microsoft has always been quite hostile to its consumer side. That isn’t to say Google, Apple, IBM, et all, are worthy or rosy praise. However, the capriciousness of Microsoft has always been rather, abrupt. Or more eloquently, Microsoft would sell the first born of poor nations to achieve its desires while entertaining the masses with a good puppet show for distraction.
Just look at the corporate structure of Microsoft. Deeply ingrained within the companies DNA is terrible corporate genetic code to hate, axe, sabotage, backstab, subterfuge and worse, in order to ensure one group comes out the favorite. This extreme buoyancy of selfishness was started by Bill Gates himself, leading by example, on how to come out on top. It went beyond Steve Jobs or Eric Schmidt level of arrogance, pride and control. No, Bill Gates was on a methodical, almost god like pillar that surpasses the others as mere distant shadows. He was simply very good at getting people to do what he wanted them to do, still to this day through the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Stopping short of digging into that nightmare, it is suffice to say that not only is this expected of Microsoft, it is who Microsoft is.
The point: Even if Microsoft gives you back something, bread crumbs to the original full course, how can you trust a company that has changed it mind so often, you need a Microsoft encyclopedia to keep up?
I would hate to remind about these events:
2010: Windows Phone jailbreaking gets accounts banned
2011: Removal of Windows 8 start menu code preventing backwards compatibly
2013: Xbox One draconian DRM (always on, ability to tie games to codes killing used game market)
2012: Windows Phone 8 upgrade snuffs Windows Phone 7 handsets after promising support
2015: Windows 10 forced updates for Home and Pro
2001: MS Jim Allchin pleading to congress on how Open Source is harmful to consumers
2005: MS knew about Xbox 360 issues and fail rate, still went ahead with plans
2014: Xbox Live paywall to all things (such as Netflix/Hulu), only stopped on this year (2014)
2012: Games for Live promised to be the future
2014: Games for live discontinued
Highlights, but you get the general idea I’m attempting to convey.
No, as sad as it is, this isn’t a company I would trust or bet my consumer or prosumer needs on. Even if they did provide all which was removed, this is just another example as to why they shouldn’t be trusted.
Don’t forget the ‘Windows Vista capable’ lie – http://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/vista-lawsuit-spotlights-ties-between-microsoft-intel/ – with their “partners”.
Good catch. That was quite the appalling mess Microsoft forced OEM’s into.
I dont understand why in the world people are dumb.Google is offering free and microsoft is not…….shame on you Microsoft.
The problem with Google is they scan all of your files and photos so they can send you better targeted advertisements or so they claim. I really don’t like that. Mega.nz also offers 50GB for free.
Why not cut down the free storage to 1GB?
Then the name onedrive actually makes sense …………
And here we were, thinking Windows 10 was free. First you let me get used to plenty of cloud space so I can keep my projects synced across computers, and then you try to force me to pay for it. Isn’t my privacy-data you collect not bringing in the big bucks as you had hoped? I am sorry I am such an uninteresting, low-worth person. You still don’t get a penny from me for the ability to store my life on your servers. I’d rather go back to USB sticks, **** even floppy disks, if it came to that.
Funny thing is, if I move away from OneDrive I will also move away from office. Seems MS is playing into Googles hand here on multiple issues.
Moving away from Onedrive to an alternative. Can’t believe they did this. Constant policy change is annoying and clearly a breach of trust. byeeee.
MS: Just give everyone a free 100GB and we might forgive and accept that you were just a bit “disoriented”
I am very disappointed to read this. Only this morning I encouraged a friend to set up OneDrive on her computer, showed her how to use it and made a start on uploading her photos.
Since becoming a parent, I have taken far more photographs than I ever thought possible and I do not wish to lose any of these. Rather than have what I thought would be a large amount of storage to use during the rest of my lifetime, I will have to find alternative storage for my precious pictures.
Likewise, with the recent launch of Groove, I took the step of uploading my music collection to One Drive so that I could enjoy it on my Windows Phone, or on the laptop away from the main PC. This in itself is around.
One Terabyte sounds a lot, and it probably is but I had planned on remaining loyal to Microsoft for life. We have a 365 Home Subscription, and I love the way that everything integrates. I love that it is so easy to share photos from my phone when away from home without using up tons of data, because they are on OneDrive. However, to reduce the free limit to 5GB in this day and age when everyone has so much digital data (photos, music, etc) is an insult.
Alongside OneDrive, I have recommended Outlook, with its inbuilt Word, Excel etc and One Drive to so many people and I now feel a little let down that I have enthused so much about Microsoft’s products. It is understandable that some people will have uploaded an extraordinarily amount of data to OneDrive as you mentioned “unlimited storage” to us all. OK, so they are in the minority, and as ever, have spoiled everything for the rest of us. Those of use who intend to remain Microsoft customers have many years of computing – creating documents, writing letters and reports, photographing, note taking, etc ahead of us. Life is becoming increasingly digitalised. Did you consider how much storage a person will need during a lifetime of computing at when you made the decision to drastically slash the available storage.
so they hired politicians as PR advisors? because thats the only other filed where everyone pays for the abuse of a few. the changes may be needed, and sure data show most users wont even notice, but this “some people are abussing so pay” is the most disastrefull and disrespectfull PR message since XBOX ONE launch.
Ok, I was going to sign the 100 plan since my current space in ending, but this nailed it: Reverting back to Google Photos.
Microsoft: Please fire whoever made this decision immediately. There is no excuses in this. Fire them all. Then we can talk.
That’s exactly right. This decision is a huge mistake. I have to wonder if Nadella really knew about it in advance – because it totally eviscerates his “mobile first, cloud first” statements. People are going to be leaving OneDrive not just because of this announcement, but because they’ve completely lost confidence in Microsoft as a cloud storage provider. They won’t hang around to see what other rollbacks will follow this one.
I don’t understand how you go from removing unlimited (which frankly, I don’t think ANYONE would care about) to reducing the free from 15 to 5, and removing camera upload bonus?
Frankly, that is the only thing I am concerned about with this announcement.
The present (and future) is in cloud storage. Google Drive offers 15GB for free, free storage of all of your music and free storage of all of your photos.
Seriously, you want Windows 10 and Lumia to work? Nobody wants an ecosystem where you cripple the free storage options when your competitors already offer so much more, for free.
I’ve invested heavily in the Microsoft/Windows ecosystem, but this announcement means that Windows is no longer a viable system for me to use. I want to sync and store all of my content and can do this for free with Google.
I hate Android. It’s a difficult to use OS which requires a new phone every year, whereas Lumia phones are simple (if limited) and work well. But the reduction in free storage just puts the boot in.
Why should I have to pay for something when I can get a better service for nothing?
Seriously, I don’t think that you realise that your struggling Lumia platform needs free cloud storage to remain competitive.
I predict that BlackBerry will cease to make smartphones in 2016, along with Microsoft – You are killing the platform!
Time to change to google drive. one drive used to be my fav. no more!
we want more storage! not less!
Same here, moved from Google to OneDrive this year and heading back there now.
WOW. GoogleDrive, here I come. As a onedrive loyal customer, this is depressing! Stupid move! ****!
I can’t even parse this statement. I’m a serious photographer and have over 100GB of storage, for which I’m paying. Is that going away? If it isn’t, will I be able to increase it in the future? Where can we even get these questions answered? What a mess.
I guess it’s obvious now that Microsoft isn’t the place to store large amounts of important stuff. The real problem isn’t even that they’re changing their plans – it’s that there’s no support channel, no way to get anything clarified. Just this useless blog, where they alternate between saying “we’re listening” and dropping bombs about the service being cut back, and never reply to anything.
The good news is, we can stop asking about placeholders. The bad news is, it’s going to take a long time for me to move 100GB of important content to a new storage provider.
Try http://mover.io to move out of Microsoft! Hope it help
Thanks, I didn’t realize such services existed. That’s exactly what I need, since I have very poor bandwidth at home.
There’s no need to worry about the 15 gig photo storage bonus for having a windows phone, since windows phone will be dead inside 2 years. Satya and Belfiore killed it by refusing to release a flagship forever, and the travesty that is windows 10 mobile (forget ease of use, just stuff everything under a hamburger menu, and forgo the hardware back button for a space-wasting software one) won’t change that.
I find I’ve got about 40 gigs of stuff on onedrive, mostly phone photos, documents I want to make sure don’t get lost if my NAS gets burned up, and, ironically, programming files from building WP apps. You know, working for zilch in order to help MS with its struggling ecosystem.
This is a dumb move from dumb guys. Sure, unlimited had to go, but when you are behind, keeping a decent 15 gig service plus 15 gigs of phone picture loyalty (plus 10 gigs of loyalty bonus for being a longtime MS user) wouldn’t have cost them much. They’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and, as they have done with the continued poor treatment of windows phone early adopters, they are convincing once-loyal customers to swear of MS services as much as possible.
This kind of ham fisted strategy couldn’t have been better designed to turn users into haters, even if it were hatched by Google or Apple.
This is ridiculous. I switched from Google Drive to OneDrive because of the unlimited space. I have not filled up to the 1TB, but am somewhat close. This is crazy frustrating because once I hit 1TB, I have no alternative. If people are abusing the system, then do something, but don’t reduce us back to 1TB… especially where people’s local hard drives could easily be at the 3TB could be greater than that easily these days. If you want to put a cap on it, do it at what the largest single hard drives around. Like why not cap at 10TB or something? This is insane especially since I’ve setup our entire home system based around OneDrive storage
Ridícula a atitude da microsoft de diminuir o armazenamento gratuito!
So because a small number of people are abusing the storage limits you are restricting everybody. This is a breach of trust and does not bode well for the future. Are you going to take the same strategy with Windows 10, give it away free and then hike the price later. Makes me think twice about upgrading.
I had been trying to decide between getting 1 Tb storage from OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive. Now my choice is between two providers – Dropbox or Google. Thanks Microsoft for helping simplify my choices.
I’ll keep my Lumia even when Microsoft will take away the camera roll bonus which by the way has no expiry date. But one thing is pretty sure, I’m not willing to pay a cent for OneDrive but I rather pay for some other vendor to get more space. Why? Because I feel no desire to pay for something that was given as a bonus before with no expiry date. I already paid for the Lumia that came with the storage bonus.
I had dealt with a Windows Phone made by Samsung (who never really supported the phone, which helped make me jump ship back to Android; sadly, Microsoft never really did either, as the phone was not available for their preview or downloads), then with the changes made to Office wherein I can no longer buy a physical disc license to have the Professional version on my laptop, then with their gawd-awful changes to the privacy policies, then creating a new app for Outlook on Android with half the features of the Outlook.com app – and took the app that actually worked for me away, and now changes to OneDrive.
How do you trust a company products if they drop support, don’t care about customers that may live where highspeed internet is not common, and reduce services for products you need?
Do I only have 2 gigs of pictures on OneDrive? Yup. Am I still ****** that my current amount of 30 gigs is going to be cut to only a sixth of that? Oh yes. Have I started downloading my pictures to move to Google Drive, and begin to look for a replacement for OneNote before you destroy that too? **** yeah I am.
With all of this, Microsoft just lost a huge amount of money – from me, and my family. I had planned on looking at a new laptop, a new game console (and seriously considering one of the new XBO bundles), Office (had I been able to get a disc), moving my professional email to Outlook (before they destroyed the mobile app), and possibly going back to WP (had they not just released them on ATT). Can’t say enough how you guys have pretty much shot yourselves in the foot – the trust is pretty much gone. Waiting for the good news from Microsoft, and it keeps getting more and more negative.
Maybe Microsoft thinks they will make more money from this strategy, but seems to me they just burned another bridge to their small number of consumer customers. And that will end them – the IT, finance, and purchasing people of tomorrow are the consumers of today – these changes WILL impact Microsoft’s business in the enterprise and education space, whether they want to see it or not. As a Financial/IT profession working up the ranks, you can bet I won’t forget this when it is my time to make or break implementation decisions.
Now would be a good time to try Sync.com, a more secure cloud storage alternative with real data privacy. The first 5GBs are free. https://Sync.com
I don’t need more than 1TB space on OneDrive but I need 45GB for free to use Windows for me. I’m using OneDrive with a WIndows Phone 8.1 phone and three Windows 10 PCs. There is 17GB of data on OneDrive. I have to change them all to Google’s unless you Microsoft change your mind.
Well done, I really couldn’t think of a way that I’d sign up for a competing service so quickly.
I’m well within the 1TB limit that will now be imposed (about 25-30GB), but the lack of trust from this makes evaluation of alternatives a necessity.
Go ahead and support this petition
https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-give-onedrive-users-back-their-storage-options
If Microsoft was actively attempting to kill its ecosystem it would be indistinguishable from its current strategy. MS has absolutely incoherent leadership, vision, and execution. It’s really stunning. 20 years from now it’ll be a textbook example of how you take absolute domination in a market and completely flush it down the toilet.
What a pathetic overreaction.
Just when MS was beginning to get some good press over new products they go and do this. Why punish everyone because of a few who abuse the system?
So now you are telling everyone who wants to actually utilise the potential of linking their new Windows 10 device – be it a PC, Laptop, Surface, or Lumia – to OneDrive, that they will also need to pay a monthly fee. How stupid.
You should have at least offered people using Windows 10 a better option.
I wonder how far up the chain in MS this particular decision has come from. As others have previously said please take a look at the onedrive user voice:
http://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/10524099-give-us-back-our-storage
39,000 votes 1,900 comments, and counting… add your voice…
As I stated above in depth in two comments, why would we want this? It is very heartwarming to see so many tech minded people voice their support against this bad judgement. However, with all the examples laid out plainly in my earlier two comments, why trust them? This won’t be the last of the very real anti-consumer decisions made regularly by Microsoft.
Even if they gave everything back, it will just be a dangerous teetering until the next anti-consumer idea to fall from Redmond. Look carefully through their history; there is no trust to be had here. Everything is clearly designed to solidify their dominance through monopolistic and juggernaught tactics.
Not to be confused with a hungry company out to rule the roost with well made products. No, Microsoft is always late to the game and uses its muscles to barge its way in and dominate through force, not choice.
I’m an engineer and work closely with Microsoft. I’ve had more years than I like to think dealing with this very hot topic. It isn’t just consumerism but corporate lust they employ with similar tautology to own that market while simultaneously letting the company who solicited their services down.
In other words, while I’m just some “Joe Schmoe” on the internet, I can attest to the their malicious acts of subterfuge to grab corporate money and run. Seriously, if I could name names, I would.
Personally, I’m moving on to the competition and will await to see if Microsoft under Satya’s lead can really become the “better” Microsoft.
I respectfully disagree Rubix. There are plenty of examples of Microsoft going the extra mile to support their customers. For example they have gone out of their way historically to maintain backward compatibility and they have released security patches on products well outside of their official end of support date. I completely agree that this is a terrible decision on their part, but I don’t agree with the rest of your argument.
Understandable. And I would agree there are examples of Microsoft “doing good”. Even a broken watch is right twice a day.
But I must politely disagree with your examples you put forth. “Security Updates past EOL (paraphrased)”. The only OS this could possibly be used is Windows XP and 2003, which were extended several times before finally meeting the death knell. This wasn’t a nicety brought on by their good will. If you recall, history correctly, Vista was extremely late to market and was a corporate and user dud (real or imagined). The negative press forced Microsoft to react and push a revised OS, which would become Windows 7, as quickly as possible. During this time, 2003 became the longest running Microsoft OS to date. Because of this, the typical EOL time frame had to be extended to prevent corporate upheaval for XP and 2003 due to the massive install base. This was not charity or goodwill, but business plane and simple.
As for backward compatibility, this is also a non starter. Remember that, the business world is a very large part of Microsofts monetary base. And businesses, being sensitive to money and time, pay the big bucks to maintain this promise of backwards compatibility along with the very real understanding that, to continue to sell future versions of there wares, this is a must have feature.
So I’m afraid to say, neither of these are examples of Microsofts good will. It has been and will always be, “just business” with Microsoft. And the few examples of good will to consumers and businesses alike always fraught with “catch 22’s”. Thus, yes, Microsoft is as I described or worse.
This isn’t to say we should all just simply stop using their products. That would be absurd. They do, in fact, make many a nice product that affords an even greater amount of good people a moderate to lavish life based on those very products.
However, every rose has its thorns, and Microsoft just happens to be more thorny than the rest. They’ve had to be put in check before and will need to be again, rest assured. As it stands now, my recommendation would be to seek competitors as this area of Microsoft, the “services” side, hides a wolf in Sherpa clothing.
5Gb for all free accounts (olders and new). that’s so stuped. I use 15 Gb at least. I’ll search for an alternative. Free Space for onedrive is actually very good
how can anyone be classed as excessive when using an “unlimited” service that they paid for ?
The more I think about this – it can’t happen. Some division head got lathered up and pushed this through, but Nadella couldn’t possibly have approved the whole thing because it’s an iceberg in the hull of their entire “mobile first, cloud first” strategy. This hurts Office, big time, and Office is the absolute core of MS.
This will be walked back. It has to be.
I am so utterly disappointed just like everybody else. If you found some retards who uploaded 75 TB of pirated movies to your server, then you should punish them, and them alone. Why are you punishing everybody else??
I am an honest user who enjoyed OneDrive for some time, both on my ASUS Laptop and my Sony Xperia with a total storage of 30 GB. I let your software grab all my pics which I took on my smartphone. Hoping that they will safe there. And now you are going to cut 25 GB from my quota, and force me to redownload all of them and find an alternative backup storage? Who’s your marketing manager?!
Sorry for the french, guys… But you done ****** up! Srsly!
I’ll paste all my tweets to @Microsoft here, to colaborate with this iniciative: Hey there MSFT. I’m very, very angry at you about that new OneDrive storage “adjustment” you’re making. My 15GBs of free storage have been used legitimately to save years of pictures and work and university documents. I’ve been using my 15GBs since SkyDrive and Windows Live Essentials and now, years later you decide to remove my storage?
After having almost ALL my pictures (dating as far as 5 years ago) and docs legitimately stored in your service you force me to remove them to comply with your policy? Is completely unfair. You offered the space, and I was loyal user for years, and I kept the free storage after your rebranding cause I WAS LOYAL to your service. I even recommended and promoted YOUR service… (Also got the space YOU PROMISED ME after stopping using Dropbox and switch to your OneDrive Android App instead). Withdrawing my photos and documents from the service, that don’t represent a case of “extreme backup”, because of your fail, shouldn’t happen! Do you know how long it takes, with my ISP speeds, to download all those 15GBs back? Reconsider, ’cause it’s NOT FAIR… Sincerily, a very loyal and sad, and angry, Microsoft OneDrive user.
Not trying to be sensational, but why lie directly to consumers in the blog post. We all know that this is not true:
“OneDrive has always been designed to be more than basic file storage and backup.”
We also all know that the free plans, different paid storage options outside of Office 365/Unlimmeted are not being changed due to the ‘abusive’ users.
These are clearly deceiptful, and the ones taking advantage of these services most are the most ardent supporters of Microsoft, because let’s face it, OneDrive is not that well marketed, known, understood, utilized by the Google and iPhone users of the world.
I will just add that I’ve been on the fence about purchasing the lumia 950xl as an upgrade to my current lumia 1020 but with this announcement, along with windows phone/mobile constantly being behind with EVERYTHING, I think I’m going to wait it out. I never thought I’d consider another phone operating system but honestly your competitors offer a complete package and it’s hard not to consider moving =(
https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-give-onedrive-users-back-their-storage-options
Just going to put this here….
After 3 days I am still infuriated by this and Microsoft blatantly not listening to their consumer base….so I’m moving personal and business accounts over to Google.
Thanks Microsoft.
Like many others I am very disappointed by this change. Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Phone… All automatically connect to one drive. And now that people actually use it they punish everyone. I can understand the unlimited being set to 1TB. But as a windows phone user I have my phone backup to my one drive. So there goes my 15GB camera roll. With only 5GB I wouldn’t be able to backup very many images or videos before I am out of space. With this change many are going to jump over to the competition as everyone out there now gives better service. 130GB down to 5GB. Not a very nice thank you for being a customer. Hopefully this policy changes some due to the customer feedback.
Migrating data is a big pain when third party cloud storage providers change their terms of service arbitrarily. Today Microsoft. Tomorrow who knows it will be google and amazon if the business doesn’t work out.In my case, i am using Tonido which is My Own Personal Cloud. Tonido (http://www.tonido.com) Server allows me to backup all my mobile photos and stream music from my own PC. Storage is pretty much unlimited. Nowadays u can buy a 3TB HD for less than 100$
Totally unexpected, initially they offered good space and also introduced friends to get space. Now all of a sudden reducing the space even for the current users. Wow, there must be some clause which many of us not read and subscribed. May be ditching it is good option and plan for local storage instead of cloud.
Good bye One Drive.
Ok, this time my Office 365 subscription let me keep at least 1 TB of space. But what’s gonna happen next? Should I check this blog daily to learn whether my files are still safe or not? Why should I care about some guy using 75 TB of your storage? Make it hard for him and not for everyone else.
Cool, thanks Microsoft. Moving to Dropbox now
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And what’s gonna happen next year? A cut from 1TB to 100GB for Office 365? No, thanks, you’ve lost my trust completely!
OneDrive. Wow. You guys committed to many things and then reneged on almost all of them. To put all my personal stuff on the cloud takes trust in the provider of the storage. You lost mine. Trust and business that is. At least you could have made these changes applicable to future subscribers and not hose all of us long term users.
so after hearing/reading about this all over the net I wouldnt be surprised if this affects the number of office subscribers. Hope the Office group isnt mad about their drop in revenue.
I knew this yesterday. Do you know? I really shock with this. I used OneDrive two years when I bought Lumia 520. I really like OneDrive, all my images, documents and videos I always store in OneDrive. But now you want to reduce storage. I don’t know I should save where my images, documents and videos is. From yesterday to now I think I found an alternative application that is Google Photos. There is high quality, unlimited storage. In short, I just write this comment let you know that I am really disappointed with you. Why do you know I just choose OneDrive that I don’t choose any apps ? Because OneDrive find me satisfied. I feel convenient for it. I can easily use it on smartphone, laptop, ipad – all in one. When I used OneDrive, I ignored any cloud storage. I hope you can read this and think twice. Thanks.
Unbelivable how inefficient MS doing marketing/communication. Just having a good run in the community with hot tools like the new Surface pro4 and Surface book together with the new Lumia 950 and now jeopardizing the positive effect without listening to the community.
Didn’t they say they will listen to the customers what they want? Microsoft ,Please re-think your strategy for the standard useres or provide attractive pricing!
I am a big fan of Microsoft. I was using Windows phone from last two years. I loves the simplicity of one drive and 30 GB of free storage which I was promised and that was one of the major reasons for sticking with the windows phone. I think in next 6 months when I will upgrade my Nokia Lumia 735 I will switch to Android or Apple. Good bye Windows Phone. I will even pay for Google drive instead of greedy Microsoft.
1. It was not expected from a reputed and pioneer technology company like Microsoft… as even small cloud storage companies are offering high free storage limit i.e. 7 GB to 50 GB.
2. It may be true that a small number of users have abused the free unlimited storage limit but most of users have not even make use of 50 GB of their free storage… so punishing a majority of users for it is not fair.
2. Decision to decrease free storage 15 GB to 5 GB and discontinue camera roll bonus of 15 GB … i.e. current 30 GB to 5 GB to all users – loyal or new, is a very bad idea. I think Microsoft should offer atleast 15 GB (including camera roll) free storage to all its users.
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