Its never good when a corporation takes something back when it promised to give for free- loads of, Microsoft did just that when the company capped the free unlimited OneDrive storage after accusing users abusing the generosity. Recently, the company’s chief marketing officer Chris Capossela admitted that Microsoft handled the whole situation “badly.”
Last month, Microsoft announced that it is putting a cap of 1TB of storage for 365 subscribers, and eliminating the 100GB and 200GB storage plans that currently cost $1.99 and $2.99. Instead, the company now offers a 50GB storage plan that cost $1.99. As part of the announcement, the company also reduced the 15GB of storage that it offered to all users to 5GB. At the time, the company noted that it was doing this because many users have abused the free limit, with some backing up as many as 5 computers and putting more than 70TB of data to the cloud.
Speaking on Windows Weekly podcast, Capossela acknowledged the issue. “OneDrive takeback is a way to anger a bunch of diehard fans, particularly in the way we did it. In that case, if anyone had seen the math, I don’t think they would have questioned the economics.”
But then it all comes down to the realization that the company shouldn’t have introduced unlimited OneDrive storage to begin with. “Why did we put ourselves there in the first place, that was another mistake that we had made a year earlier. The economics were totally unsustainable, the way we did the communications was very rushed, because of a major publication that was going to publish something that was very damaging, and was not true. And so we felt like we had to get in front of it and we just weren’t ready.”
“We just were not ready. But the alternative of having a very damaging, borderline false story run in a massive publication, Frank and I just couldn’t let that happen. We just didn’t do a good enough job in the sprint to beat the story to get the communications in the shape that they needed to be.”
“The economic decision was easy. We made the economic decision, incorrectly, a year earlier, and then when we saw the usage just take off and you have 400 million or whatever it is, and you’re upgrading a gazillion Windows 10 machines, and they’re all using OneDrive, which is great, but you’ve got to use it in a way that’s economically sustainable. Those were some of the things that went into it.”
For what it’s worth, the company earlier this month apologized for the way it handled the whole OneDrive situation, and added that it will give let users keep their 15GB of free cloud storage and additional 15GB camera roll bonus, provided they opted in by next month.
courtesy: Microsoft newsroom.
