Microsoft reveals why it decided to limit OneDrive storage

Microsoft announced some time ago that it made the decision to limit OneDrive storage for many paying and all free customers of the service.

Basically, it made the decision to limit paying customers to 1TB of storage instead of unlimited storage, paid OneDrive plans from 100GB or 200GB to 50GB, and free plans from 15GB to 5GB.

The reason given at the time was that some paying customers where abusing the unlimited storage option by uploading more than 14,000 times the average storage quota.

The explanation fell short as it made no sense to punish free users for that for instance, or users who paid for 100GB or 200GB plans.

People started to look for OneDrive alternatives, and it took a while before Microsoft caved in and decided to provide an option to free users to keep their storage, or at least part of it.

The company did also announce that OneDrive for Business users would get unlimited storage, which added to the confusion.

Episode 445 of the Windows Weekly show, featuring Microsoft CMO Chris Capossela, is a treasure trove for disgruntled Microsoft customers and company critics who don't understand some of the company's actions in recent time.

He addressed Windows upgrade concerns during the show for instance and here especially Microsoft's aggressive pushing of Windows 10 as a free update on older systems.

But that is just one of the topics covered. Another controversial move by Microsoft was the downgrade of OneDrive storage quotas for nearly all customers of the service:

There are big, big business model decisions we made this year [..]

OneDrive take back was a way to anger a bunch of die hard fans particularly in the way we did it. In that case, if anyone would have seen the math, I don't think they would have questioned the actual economics.

Why did we put ourselves in that position in the first place that was another mistake that we have made sort of a year earlier.

The economics were totally unsustainable. The way we did the communication was very rushed because of a major publication that was going to print something that was very damaging and was not true.

According to Chris Capossela, Microsoft wanted to make the announcement a couple of months further down the line and in a way that all changes would be communicated at the same time including those for OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and Office 365.

The reason why Microsoft moved the schedule ahead was that a damaging article was about to be published in a major publication. It is unclear which publication Capossela refers to and what the article would reveal, but what seems clear is that it would be about OneDrive and/or Office365.

Closing Words

The reason Microsoft's Marketing Chief provides paint the whole situation in a different light. Microsoft could have avoided much of the criticism and bad press that followed the announcement by providing a better explanation of the situation.

The move itself would have still been problematic and criticized but it is unlikely that the company would have received as much bad press at it did.

Now You: Should Microsoft be more open when it comes to the decisions it is making?

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