Over a year ago, Microsoft promised unlimited OneDrive storage to all Office 365 subscribers, but now, due to an executive shakeup, the company has denied to keep those promises.
The surprise announcement from the division responsible for consumer OneDrive service has rolled back a signature feature of the OneDrive service, and has reneged on the promise that it made over a year ago.
To be specific, on October 27, 2014, Microsoft had announced that all of its Office 365 subscribers would upgrade to “unlimited” OneDrive storage plans. As a part of this announcement, the company also posted a graphic saying, “Unlimited OneDrive Storage and Office from $6.99/month.”
Back then, Even Chris Jones, the Vice President of Consumer OneDrive service division did mention the free cloud offer in an own blog post:
“Today, storage limits just became a thing of the past with Office 365. Moving forward, all Office 365 customers will get unlimited OneDrive storage at no additional cost. We’ve started rolling this out today to Office 365 Home, Personal, and University customers. The roll out will continue over the coming months”
Unfortunately, the upgrade did not get through for everyone these months, and now the company announces to renege on that promise.
Changes Made By Microsoft for OneDrive services
“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.”
According to Microsoft, the main reason behind this change of heart was “A small number of users,” who “backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings.” In fact, “In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average.”
This shouldn’t be surprising, as the offer certainly looks insanely attractive for users with large media collections. But now, things have changed, and only 1 Terabyte is available for Office 365 subscribers.
As of now, any one accessing more than 5GB of free or 1TB of paid OneDrive subscription can keep the greater storage for at least 12 months. The changes will go into effect next year, but the users won’t be able to save any new files, until the available storage space falls below the new limits.
Meanwhile, those users who are unhappy with the change can seek a pro-rated refund on the remaining term of their Office 365 subscription.
Source: ZDNet
