
OneDrive reduces free tier from 15GB to 5GB - novaleaf
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Microsoft-OneDrive-storage-changes-bf91132d-d0cb-4cbb-96ba-86278c5c1c2f
======
whoopdedo

        We’re also no longer planning to offer unlimited storage to Office 365 Home,
        Personal, or University subscribers.
    

The real story. Now they're forcing already paying customers to double-dip.
Home and Personal I can understand, but not being generous to students seems
the opposite of how Microsoft has been in the past. I also don't see anything
about how an Office 365 subscriber could buy extra storage. At least the 1TB
limit is per-user.

~~~
yuhong
Storage is always limited, and it is unlikely that being more generous like
this makes sense.

~~~
danneu
Yes, but using the word "unlimited" as a temporary marketing gimmick needs to
stop.

~~~
toomuchtodo
It'll stop as soon as people stop believing it. Until then...

------
kyriakos
Offering unlimited space was a mistake from the start. Cutting down on their
free tier though is a bad move.

I use OneDrive partly cause I got 5 licenses of Office along with it for my
family - which is a steal considering what you get even if its 1TB and not
unlimited. If you compare Office 365 Home pricing with the popular Dropbox for
example you'll see its absolutely worth it. My concern though is what happens
if MS decides to cut down from 1TB to 100GB next month...

~~~
danieldk
_If you compare Office 365 Home pricing with the popular Dropbox for example
you 'll see its absolutely worth it._

I have both Office 365 and Dropbox Pro. But as online storage, they are really
miles apart. The OneDrive client is flaky, slow, and does not do delta sync,
the Dropbox client is pretty much the absolute opposite - fast, does delta
sync, and LAN sync. Applications that upload through the OneDrive API (I use
rclone and Arq) often fail with API errors.

In the end, you cannot simply compare prices. Office 365 is great if you need
Microsoft Office, the OneDrive storage and Skype minutes are the cherries on
top. But if you need to move significant amounts of data, Dropbox Pro is a
steal at $9.99 per month compared to Office 365.

~~~
ValentineC
> Applications that upload through the OneDrive API (I use rclone and Arq)
> often fail with API errors.

Speaking of rclone, I'm surprised how much Amazon Cloud Drive's API has
improved. It's still not viable for sync, but I'm using it as a secondary
backup for files I won't access very often. For some purposes, it's an even
better steal at $60 a year.

(I hope they won't go the way of Microsoft and renege on their unlimited offer
though.)

------
frik
They are so backwards. First the reduce it from unlimited to to 15GB. And now
to 5GB. And blame it on the user. Way to go. End users are completely knocked
down and are questioning cloud services.

And Win10 with its spying, so nice to the end user. No wonder their brands are
burned, the global market share of WinPhone fall to 1.1% in Q4 2015. So sad,
because the products were damn fine until Satya Nadella (and Bill Gates in the
background) took over from Steve Balmer.

~~~
stephenr
> End users are completely knocked down and are questioning cloud services.

End users _should_ be questioning any "cloud" service that has unlimited data
storage.

~~~
frik
Yes, but Windows 10 is neither free (you can trade a valid Win7/8 license for
a Win10 license) nor cloud product per se (more a subscription). And when you
buy a Win10 Home, Student or Pro license they in all cases spy on you and your
data. There is no way to turn it off, except with the LTSB license that is
only sold to large enterprise corporations. That's not the Microsoft of the
Balmer era, and a lot worse than any product of the competition.

~~~
stephenr
The article is about their 'cloud' storage service, and thats what I commented
on - Windows has had a laundry list of issues since v1.0, so honestly anyone
still using it now gets no sympathy from me when their poor decision bites
them in the ass.

------
spriggan3
> We overcommitted with our free storage limits and we want to focus on
> delivering high-value productivity and collaboration experiences that
> benefit the majority of our users.

I wonder if Google will also downsize its free tier. I also wonder if there is
a real business in cloud hosting. I doesn't seem like Dropbox is doing well
either.

~~~
danieldk
Cloud hosting can be a real business, since it solves a real problem. The
problem is that Microsoft/Google/etc. sell storage with little profit or even
underpriced to grab market share as quickly as possible.

Maybe they are figuring out by now that the vast majority of the people who
fall for free/cheap cloud storage will never pay up. The real money is in
business customers who are not data hoarders, but pay 10 dollar per month per
user for a Dropbox Pro/Business, Google Apps, or Office 365 Business account
anyway.

------
albasha
Ha, sounds like overselling didn't work well for them. They are even
downsizing the paid plans and entirely removing the unlimited ones.

~~~
byte1918
What if everyone is overselling and Microsoft is the one with the most success
and they are the first ones to see consequences. I mean, they have a huge
infrastructure, I give them the benefit of doubt and consider also that people
might be abusing.

~~~
newjersey
People over at thurrott.com think this has to do something with the allegedly
upcoming full device backup feature in Windows 10.

I can imagine easily having terabytes of backup data for unlimited plans.
Still I don't get why the free tier needs to shrink.

------
nsxwolf
It seems like everywhere you look you see signs of a downturn -- less
investment, less free stuff, more layoffs.

------
miander
A very unusual move and likely to lose them some customers. Some of them will
cough up money and I suspect many will leave. I wonder if this was in response
to abuse? At least they didn't waste the opportunity to try to move people
over to their Google Docs competitor.

------
mgo
I don't understand why they need to make these cuts. It's Microsoft - they
surely have access to extremely cheap hard drives through bulk purchasing.
What's 10GB?

~~~
spriggan3
> I don't understand why they need to make these cuts. It's Microsoft - they
> surely have access to extremely cheap hard drives through bulk purchasing.
> What's 10GB?

Microsoft didn't become what it is by giving away stuff for free, quite the
contrary.

~~~
nroets
In the past, Microsoft has provided a lot of free stuff, provided you have a
valid Windows license. Browsers, video players, development tools etc.

~~~
darkclarity
Online storage is a physical object that requires dedicated infrastructure,
whereas software can be built and forgotten about.

~~~
mgo
Not really, all of those things mentioned need constant security patches even
if they don't receive new features. You can't have an insecure Microsoft free
application on a non-EOL Windows. They patch things all the time. Sure it
doesn't seem like as big of a cost as hard drives, but Microsoft needs to pay
engineers and QA guys to fix those programs. Nothing is done for free.

------
ja27
Back in November. There was a way to opt in to keep your existing free tier
storage.

------
RIMR
Mega offers 50GB for free.

------
awgneo
Cloud rot.

------
tomc1985
Never trust the cloud, it will always stab you in the back... eventually

~~~
Dylan16807
You can say the same thing about any service. Or product. Nothing that holds
data is trustworthy in the long term, except specialty paper.

~~~
tomc1985
Holding the bits gives you so many more options with regards to spontaneous
changes in service quality. As a nearby comment alludes to, you don't have to
deal with all the BS that comes with renting. It is saddening to think that
people find this kind of impermanence acceptable; they even defend it!

(Of cour$e they do)

Edit: to be fair, it's nice to be in control of the bits, whether you use them
internally or offer them as a service... but as a user it is frustrating to
see what used to be a DIY world turn into this... sort-of stucco skyscrapers
we call "the cloud"

(And it is especially obnoxious to watch companies sell them the cloud, as if
it were so unobtainable in the past... but of course there's money to be made
in new markets, so onward!)

~~~
Dylan16807
We're talking about cloud sync. You always have a copy. You're in control.

------
3327
No NO JoshAg. Bate and switch.

------
joshAg
Embrace, Extend and Extinguish.

~~~
JungleGymSam
I don't think that applies here. It's their own service.

~~~
joshAg
That's always how it works.

They make a service that matches the others in features. That's embrace.

Then they gave a large amount of storage (relative to the other free
offerings) to convince people to come over to their service instead of the
others. That's extend.

Then once they've weathered the cost of providing so much free storage better
than the others and/or gotten a bunch of entrenched customers, they severely
reduce the amount of free storage with no warning or grandfathering. That's
extinguish.

If you switched over to them from someone else for the extra amount of storage
for the free tier, you're fucked. You need to download and store elsewhere (up
to) 10 GB, and do it fast before they charge you.

