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Microsoft Cuts OneDrive Storage Limits, Citing Abuse (onedrive.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the now-that-they-have-you dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft previously offered Office 365 subscribers unlimited space on their OneDrive cloud storage platform. Now, the company has announced that it's reducing the limit to 1 TB, citing abuse from a small number of users, some of whom dropped 75 TB worth of data in Microsoft's cloud. In addition, Microsoft is cutting the size of their limited storage plans. They used to offer 100 GB for $2/month and 200 GB for 4$/month. Those plans are being replaced with 50 GB for $2/month (existing subscribers will get to keep their plans, for now). Microsoft is also decreasing the amount of space users get for free from 15 GB to 5 GB, and discontinuing the 15 GB camera roll bonus. These changes will roll out in "early 2016," and users will have up to a year to get down under the new caps.

18 of 330 comments (clear)

  1. Using your advertised space != Abuse by guruevi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't advertise as unlimited if uploading 70TB of data is too much. It's called false advertising and is against the law in European countries. Sadly, the US doesn't have good consumer protection laws.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    1. Re:Using your advertised space != Abuse by Sowelu · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I dunno, it's hardly false advertising to say "this policy isn't working for us, we're changing it going forward, but you can keep that extra storage for 12 months as compensation". Because that's what they're doing. Is it false advertising to ever change what plans you choose to offer?

    2. Re:Using your advertised space != Abuse by arth1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I thought all the Microsoft data was stored in Ireland. Wasn't that their previous excuse?

      No, it's just their money that is stored in Ireland.

    3. Re:Using your advertised space != Abuse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      It's called false advertising and is against the law in European countries. Sadly, the US doesn't have good consumer protection laws.

      We do have an incredibly large military though. Perhaps if you weren't such a bunch of useless pansies you could have one too and you wouldn't have to suck Putin & Assad's cocks.
      --
      roman_mir, blocked by the Hillariots again.

    4. Re:Using your advertised space != Abuse by kelemvor4 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      First, it was 75TB, not 75GB. Very big difference. Second, they aren't saying 75TB is >= unlimited. They're saying they've decided unlimited isn't feasible and are discontinuing it as an option. Completely different.

      They're also calling the upload of 75TB abuse, which it isn't.

    5. Re:Using your advertised space != Abuse by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They advertised unlimited and provided unlimited, now they're warning everyone it's not unlimited, and in a year will stop providing unlimited. There's no way you can twist that to be false advertising.

      It's always annoying what a company changes a product in a way you don't like, or raises prices for the same thing, but that has nothing to do with false advertising. Companies that do that excessively are good to avoid, of course, but products do evolve over time.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    6. Re: Using your advertised space != Abuse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Such terms and changes do not constitute a legal contract.

      Contracts REQUIRE understanding, agreement, and negotiation (even if it's a "yes" or "no").
      If you remove one party's ABILITY to negotiate, you don't have a contract.

      That's all true, but not relevant. The free accounts have no specific Contract term defined, other than "Can change any time", which means you don't actually HAVE a contract in the sense that you are thinking.... the Contract in this case ends at any arbitrary point in time when either party wishes it to.
      For paid accounts, the Contract expires and renews at the end of each term. So for example if you pay per month, it renews each month, if you pay each year, it renews each year, and at each renewal both parties have the option of setting forth new Terms and refusing to honor the old ones.

      You also seemed to be confused about the difference between Establishing a Contract, and Breaking one. At best, you could argue that MS is Breaking a Contract, and you could then start talking about filing a Suit over Damages. Good Luck with That.

    7. Re: Using your advertised space != Abuse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Pray they do not alter it further.

  2. The real definition of "abuse" by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Claiming you are offering some very large resource, then pulling that away in short order is REAL abuse.

    If the number of people "abusing" the system (with only 75TB of data) then why couldn't Microsoft have just absorbed those users? That's only 75x the current limit, are the number of users of the system in the mere thousands?

    I almost signed up with them to upload a few TB of photos/video I've taken over the years as an online backup. Good thing I didn't go with Microsoft!

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:The real definition of "abuse" by arth1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      $100 worth of pennies stacked on top of each other is taller than me, but that doesn't mean that I'm not capable of having that much money.

      No, but it does imply that you're less than 15.2 m tall.

  3. They admit user data snooping! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How would they know about "entire movie collections" being stored?
    So very comforting!

  4. Transcript of what happened by wardrich86 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    "We recently noticed a huge spike in cloud usage and got real excited. With pecker-in-hand we began perusing what we expected to be millions of nudes and selfies, but instead found full-blown DVD collections and other crap we're not interested in. As punishment for not providing us with sexy nudes, we have decided to just lower the cap down. Too bad, so sad."

  5. You would think these companies would learn by istartedi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This has been going on for years. Companies offer unlimited service, and then a hand full of customers try to see how far they can take it. You would think that they would have some standard boilerplate specifying something to the effect that while there is no specific limit, they reserve the right to cap accounts that are at or near the top of usage. I imagine these things are a typical bell curve with a long tail. I think clipping the crazy long tail of users who are using 100,000 more resources than average is perfectly legit. The lawyers need to put their heads together and come up with a commercial definition of "unlimited" that 99.9% of us can live with. The 0.1% who think they have a right to store 70TB for nothing are just as much dick-heads as anybody else.

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    1. Re:You would think these companies would learn by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unlimited, as a word, has a meaning. That meaning becomes meaningless if you change the definition simply because someone fully tests the the terminology.

      The point being, "Unlimited" is a great marketing term, but will cause issues in practicality. Do not use it if you can't fathom people pushing the limit towards infinity.

      The lawyers need to put their heads together and come up with a commercial definition of "unlimited" that 99.9% of us can live with.

      No, they don't. Marketing droids can say "We offer 'nearly unlimited*' storage" and then define what "nearly unlimited" actually means. e.g. "*Nearly Unlimited = 25 TB" (or whatever they want to define it as)

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  6. I promise by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Insightful
    to cut back my zero useage of one drive from zero bytes to -0 bytes.

    Seriously folks

    This

    is

    the

    Goddamned

    Cloud!

    Here today, and vanished into blue sky tomorrow.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  7. Re:Photos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    It's not a porno collection problem, it's a photograph and home movies problem.

    The cloud is a great place to store those, and if you live for a decade or two, even if you don't photograph all the time, you get a lot. Add that to the documents you have and you go way over a 50G limit. Single SD cards are 8GB at this point. At $1/month for 25 GB, personal RAID starts looking better and better.

    How about printing and keeping the most important photographs in your life ? You know, how people have been doing for the last century or so. This idea (fad is a better word) of keeping EVERYTHING trival, stupid and important in your life is just plain idiotic. Do you really want to record every moment of your life, 24 hours/24, 365 days/year till the day you die ?

    Not everything in your life is important.
    Not everthing warrants to be recorded and kept till death keeps you apart from your "earthly things".
    Not every mail is worth keeping.
    Etc....

  8. Re:Photos by JeffAtl · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In most cases, photos that turn out to be important or have high sentimental value aren't known at the time.

  9. Re:Photos by sexconker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Plus, hard copies aren't nearly secure enough. Even the best archival quality printing will fade. That's even true just for the relatively short amount of time some of us have been keeping digital archives.

    Perhaps you just never did anything interesting ever...

    One day you will die.
    Your children, friends, neighbors, or government will then go through your crap and toss the vast majority of it out.
    When those people die, the same will happen to them, and wait trace remained of your shit will be further diluted.

    Your futile efforts to preserve everything are nothing but a symptom of your inability to accept your own mortality.
    Even if you die on a cross or you end up buried in a pyramid, people will forget you and your mark on the world will fade out of existence.

    TLDR: Let it go, let it goooooooo!