Microsoft Reduces OneDrive Storage for Office 365 and Free Users, Eliminates Unlimited Option

[sracer]

Its clear the '75tb users' is a smoke screen, otherwise they would just lower unlimited to 5 or 10tb.

Yes. It is painfully obvious that using the supposed 75TB users as the reason for wholesale changes to OneDrive capacity tiers is a smokescreen. To start with, we only have Microsoft's word that there are 75TB users. If it was a legitimate issue, then Microsoft simply sunsets "unlimited" and replaces that with a cap, and that's it.

Dropping free users from 15GB to 5GB and eliminating the 15GB camera roll has nothing to do with the supposed 75TB abusers.

The naiveté of those believing that "it was a few bad apples spoiling it for the rest of us" is quite puzzling to me.


What I suspect really happened was that Microsoft was once again engaged in their embrace, extend, extinguish practices, this time with cloud storage. Their goal, take out DropBox, Box, etc. When that didn't meet their targets, it was time to reign in the freebies back to a financial viable model.

I loved OneDrive, my favourite storage solution as a Windows and Mac User, but MS are quickly eroding they key benefits, such as storage capacity, file size and removal of the best OS integration ,placeholders in Win 8.1.

In my experience, OneDrive is the least reliable of the cloud storage offerings. I use it only for files that I need access to from behind the company firewall even though I have 1TB per account with my Office 365 subscription.

 

[pika2000]

In my experience, OneDrive is the least reliable of the cloud storage offerings. I use it only for files that I need access to from behind the company firewall even though I have 1TB per account with my Office 365 subscription.

Agreed. For a huge software company, it is silly seeing that MS cannot even do file syncing right. Reliability wise, OneDrive is way below Dropbox. OneDrive is the only file syncing service that I have used where it can take as long as 40 minutes to register changed in a folder and sync it. It's just ridiculous.

 

[Max(IT)]

Agreed. For a huge software company, it is silly seeing that MS cannot even do file syncing right. Reliability wise, OneDrive is way below Dropbox. OneDrive is the only file syncing service that I have used where it can take as long as 40 minutes to register changed in a folder and sync it. It's just ridiculous.

TBH never seen such a delay....

 

[sracer]

Agreed. For a huge software company, it is silly seeing that MS cannot even do file syncing right. Reliability wise, OneDrive is way below Dropbox. OneDrive is the only file syncing service that I have used where it can take as long as 40 minutes to register changed in a folder and sync it. It's just ridiculous.

Same here. I've been quite impressed with DropBox's syncing. On rare occasions I'll need to remote into my home machine and copy a file to Dropbox and literally a second after the copy completes, my local system is syncing the file.

 

[Supermallet]

Just ONE customer is using the same as 14,000 customers, multiply that by 100 or even 1000, it's pretty obvious that Microsoft is being upfront with their customers.

No, they're not being upfront with their customers. Microsoft is blaming a few outlier customers for lowering the storage space for free customers? In what world does that make sense? And if Microsoft can go from offering unlimited for paying customers to only 1 TB going forward, this means something is wrong with their systems, or they're just trying to make money. If the ONLY problem was that some people used 75 TB, then you ban those accounts and put a cap on paid accounts, like say 3-5 TB. There's no reason to touch the free tiers at all, and to remove lower paid options. The logic simply does not add up.

And I don't care how often you defend Microsoft in this thread, they're going about this the wrong way.

 

[RockSpider]

No, they're not being upfront with their customers. Microsoft is blaming a few outlier customers for lowering the storage space for free customers? In what world does that make sense? And if Microsoft can go from offering unlimited for paying customers to only 1 TB going forward, this means something is wrong with their systems, or they're just trying to make money. If the ONLY problem was that some people used 75 TB, then you ban those accounts and put a cap on paid accounts, like say 3-5 TB. There's no reason to touch the free tiers at all, and to remove lower paid options. The logic simply does not add up.

And I don't care how often you defend Microsoft in this thread, they're going about this the wrong way.

I'm sure they'd love to ban those accounts, but they probably can't due to legal reasons, after all they did say unlimited, maybe, just maybe, the problem is so bad they just haven't got the capacity to allow more.

 

[Supermallet]

I'm sure they'd love to ban those accounts, but they probably can't due to legal reasons, after all they did say unlimited, maybe, just maybe, the problem is so bad they just haven't got the capacity to allow more.

Then there's no reason to trust Microsoft with our business, if a few people can take down their entire cloud storage system just by using it a lot.

 

[Dammit Cubs]

If that ridiculous excuse was actually true, the simple way of shutting down the 75 TB uploaders (who thought unlimited actually meant unlimited, silly people!) would be to reduce the Unlimited plan to 5 TB and leave the rest intact.

There is no such thing as unlimited. And I believe alot of other companies write some type of disclaimer stating that the unlimited is equal to max XXGB. Same as internet companies have a hard limit on caps but its well beyond that of the norm.

There are calculations and allocations made in server farms based on usage size and model. Microsoft does not buy 1XB of drives x the entire population of the earth and find out that only 1% of that is really used. It's projected and based of some numbers. Obviously, they were off and it's their fault, not the user but wow, show some constraint. Are these movies even legal movies or illegally downloaded? I'm going to assume illegally.

I know its unlimited, but when i see 75TB of movies, i just...WTF?

 

[RockSpider]

There is no such thing as unlimited. And I believe alot of other companies write some type of disclaimer stating that the unlimited is equal to max XXGB. Same as internet companies have a hard limit on caps but its well beyond that of the norm.

There are calculations and allocations made in server farms based on usage size and model. Microsoft does not buy 1XB of drives x the entire population of the earth and find out that only 1% of that is really used. It's projected and based of some numbers. Obviously, they were off and it's their fault, not the user but wow, show some constraint. Are these movies even legal movies or illegally downloaded? I'm going to assume illegally.

I know its unlimited, but when i see 75TB of movies, i just...WTF?

At least there's a couple of us who can see the predicament MS has left itself in, I'd even feel sorry for Apple in these circumstances.

 

[sracer]

I'm sure they'd love to ban those accounts, but they probably can't due to legal reasons, after all they did say unlimited, maybe, just maybe, the problem is so bad they just haven't got the capacity to allow more.

That makes no sense. It is one thing thing to eliminate all unlimited space accounts. But what does that have to do with reducing the capacity of the free accounts?

 

[RockSpider]

That makes no sense. It is one thing thing to eliminate all unlimited space accounts. But what does that have to do with reducing the capacity of the free accounts?

Tell me how they're going to eliminate all the accounts with 75TB on them, there are laws believe it or not. They don't have all these different sized HDDs with separate data on them, it's all one big mess spread out over thousands of Hdds.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Tell me how they're going to eliminate all the accounts with 75TB on them, there are laws believe it or not. They don't have all these different sized HDDs with separate data on them, it's all one big mess spread out over thousands of Hdds.

What laws, in particular, are you referring to?

 

[freeskier93]

This shouldn't be a very surprising move as it was pretty obvious the "unlimited" storage was going to be abused and giving out large amounts of free storage wasn't viable. The reality is the only reason the free tiers exist is to turn people over to a payed tier, I suspect there is a very low turnover rate for OneDrive because majority of users are Office 365 subscribers. By cutting down the free tier they are, for lack of a better term, removing the leaches on their service (some of which have gotten quite large). If these free users get mad and go somewhere else it really doesn't matter, they weren't paying in the first place.

For likely VAST majority of the OneDrive user base (O365 subscribers) this has no affect. 1TB is PLENTY of storage for almost anyone, personally I've only used a couple hundred GB. O365/OneDrive is still by far the best value around.

 

[RockSpider]

What laws, in particular, are you referring to?

Uhmm deleting someone's data without permission, I don't know what law that might be, but I think it would be illegal.

 

[crashoverride77]

No doubt that's why most businesses and industry uses Windows and Microsoft Office products rather than Apple

Oh no someone didn't read their history book.

 

[crashoverride77]

Yes they can. It all sits on servers they manage, either in their data centres or on third party storage they lease. If required, your data can be accessed.

Apple post some information on their website such as this:

http://www.apple.com/uk/privacy/government-information-requests/



Yes, they 'carefully' review. Ultimately, once a request comes in, it's usually granted. As for the backdoor in any of their products, they don't need to give a 'backdoor' to an agency (although many companies do concede to Government demands). Information passed over the internet is all intercepted & archived. Here in the UK we are far, far worse than our US counterparts for snooping. In fact, when the US agencies are denied a request, they just come to us, it's called "collect & share". Our vast array of data archive servers contain every persons entire digital history & archive. This is the backdoor.

Snooping is far, far more sophisticated than people realise. It's like no ones considered that the very firmware on their computers internal components hasn't been compromised in some way to open a backdoor into your system. Well, it's more of a tunnel than a backdoor. At least a door can be closed...

Not with iOS 8 and above, haven't read the news recently.
Their cloud stuff is encrypted as everything in iCloud using AES 128/256. Do you think 1password can ready user data because it stored in their servers. Lol

Pretty sure that's encrypted by Apple, meaning Apple can decrypt it as well.

They don't have the keys.
You think 1passord or lastPass can ready users password because they store their stuff on servers? If AES 256 encryption is done properly they can't see anything.

 

[crashoverride77]

That's like saying a door can't be opened if you don't have the key. You don't need a key to open a door, you use brute force instead.

Yeah good luck with that when using AES 128 or 256, you only need like 10 supercomputers and about 1 million years. Some of you guys are funny

 

[C DM]

Not with iOS 8 and above, haven't read the news recently.
Their cloud stuff is encrypted as everything in iCloud using AES256. Do you think 1password can ready user data because it stored in their servers. Lol


They don't have the keys.
You think 1passord or lastPass can ready users password because they store their stuff on servers? If AES 256 encryption is done properly they can't see anything.

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/cops-dont-need-encryption-backdoor-to-hack-iphones/

http://mashable.com/2014/09/27/police-can-still-get-your-iphone-data/

 

[crashoverride77]

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/cops-dont-need-encryption-backdoor-to-hack-iphones/

http://mashable.com/2014/09/27/police-can-still-get-your-iphone-data/

Yeah I guess I was partly incorrect, my apologies.

Apple does not have the keys to iCloud Keychain, I though that was also the case for iCloud in general.
Also these articles talk about iCloud backups, so I wonder if that includes data stored in iCloud Drive etc.

Anyway can we agree that Apple is at the forefront to privacy which is why the FBI is going crazy. I am sure they probably get rid of iCloud keys soon too, hopefully.
The article was very interesting talking about the fingerprint stuff.

 

[Max(IT)]

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/cops-dont-need-encryption-backdoor-to-hack-iphones/

http://mashable.com/2014/09/27/police-can-still-get-your-iphone-data/

I'm still not sure Apple can decrypt your backups, but I can't find any documents to support my hypothesis

 

[B60boy]

My issues is "what's next"? I love OneNote, but what happens when they decide to break that out and charge for like the fine folks at EverNote are doing? Remember, there was a time when OneNote was a billable item and was not "free". They could go back to that too just like with OneDrive. And they got you locked in....#confidenceshaker

 

[nicho]

Uhmm deleting someone's data without permission, I don't know what law that might be, but I think it would be illegal.

A lot of cloud services TOS say when you upload something it's not yours anymore, it's theirs. Only the fact it would be business suicide stops them from deleting stuff people have put there.

 

[spinedoc77]

Agreed. For a huge software company, it is silly seeing that MS cannot even do file syncing right. Reliability wise, OneDrive is way below Dropbox. OneDrive is the only file syncing service that I have used where it can take as long as 40 minutes to register changed in a folder and sync it. It's just ridiculous.

OneDrive personal has always been rock solid for me, I'm surprised by how quickly and accurately the syncs are. OneDrive for business is another story, what a complete pile of steaming sh.. that is. I paid for 6 months of enterprise/azure/onedrive for business and I was constantly on the phone with completely clueless "upper level" techs, I even had a conversation with a sharepoint engineer one night. I wouldn't wish that mess on anyone. I canceled and they refunded all my money and I went with Google drive which proved much more reliable, but it still hiccups at times, but never needs tech support.

 

[Atlantico]

It's amusing to see the impotent trolling attempts by a few members here lulzing at imagined freeloaders being the only one's criticizing this move by Microsoft.

Nobody's biting.

Because it's not about the freeloaders, for Microsoft, freeloaders to be expected - it's about the ecosystem. It's about trust. The one thing people need in any business relationship is trust, be they the seller or the buyer and the one thing they need in order to be in such a relationship is to belong to that particular business ecosystem.

So Microsoft arrived late in the Cloud game, but recognizing the value of the cloud - basically online storage - they tried to distinguish themselves from the competition by offering a reasonably high storage quota gratis. Not very high, 15GBs is just about enough *these days* to manage a very modest personal collection of files. That's about it. 5GBs like Apple has been offering is the 640k equivalent. It's nowhere near enough for anyone. My own mother has filled up iCloud and she doesn't even know it exists. She just started to get solicitations from Apple to buy additional space on her iCloud. So it's not very hard to do.

The point is; 15GBs are reasonable for users today, but very soon it will feel restrictive enough for people to buy more storage space - and getting them to use these 15GBs or 30GBs with the camera roll addition is an investment for Microsoft. Because even 30GBs is going to fill up. It is. Then you need to pay, but then you're already committed to their service. Even so, 15GBs or 30GBs is a very modest investment and if any one of those people subscribe for even a month it has paid up many times.

Because Microsoft isn't a charity, but it isn't the only player either - and even today it's not the go-to name in online storage.

With this move Microsoft screwed up consumer trust on more than one level, which is kind of impressive.
One, they basically declared that their cloud service is one which becomes more limited and expensive with time. If you stick with it, the deal will become worse.
Two, they insinuated that they're looking into people's stuff - perhaps they didn't, perhaps some user called all angry because he couldn't upgrade his OneDrive to 85TBs in order to stuff in more DVRs.
Three, they blame users for their business decision. Why? It makes them seem petty and their attitude towards customers (after all the 75TB weirdos were paying customers) nasty.

In conclusion, cutting the unlimited offer for paying customers was probably something they needed to do. Fine. But connecting that somehow to their most basic offer, their introduction into their ecosystem (and hopefully a paying relationship) was stupid. As was insinuating that they know what is on your OneDrive (even though the *do* know) and finally blaming their own paying customers for abusing a service being the reason for their gutting all of it.

It's stupid on so many, many levels. Insulting customers (even though they are acting like idiots) is not a good move, never has been. Betraying trust by blaming customers is also a bad move.

But cutting the base tier of your ecosystem, so much it isn't actually competitive any longer, sowing the seeds of doubt in people's minds that you can actually even comply with your most modest offerings into the future, well that is *the* most stupid move. 5GBs today, tomorrow 2GBs. Why not? No GBs and only access OneDrive through an Office 365 subscription? Why not? It could happen.

So why bother with investing in such an ecosystem? Why bother at all. That is the question Microsoft just didn't ask.

 

[Max(IT)]

the only acceptable move should have been to switch from an unlimited plan to a 50 (or 30) Tb plan, leaving the rest untouched.