Stay Connected
Atlanta Black Star/Technology
Technology

Microsoft Drops Prices on Its Cloud Service OneDrive

Posted byBy Leo | Published on: CommentsComments (0)

The cloud wars have begun.

On the heels of Apple announcing cheap rates for iCloud storage and Amazon’s unlimited free photo uploads for the Fire phone, Microsoft is cutting prices for its OneDrive cloud storage service. Drastically.

You’ll soon be able to buy 100GB of OneDrive storage for just $1.99 a month (down from $7.49), and 200GB for $3.99 (down from $11.49). The free allotment is going up, too: Anyone with a OneDrive account gets 15GB (it used to be 7GB).

The biggest jump, however, is the amount of storage granted to Office 365 subscribers. If you subscribe to Office, you get a massive 1 terabyte of storage, and that’s per person. An Office 365 Home account lets you share the subscription with five people, and each person gets 1TB, adding up to a maximum of 5TB. Previously, Office subscriptions granted just 20GB per person.

The paid rates are slightly better than what Apple announced for iCloud in early June. Apple grants 5GB free, charging $0.99 a month for 20GB. There is no 100GB option, but at 200GB, the rate is the same as OneDrive’s, at $3.99.

The other way Microsoft wants you to look at it: If you’re going to be paying for cloud storage anyway, you may as well get Office for free.

Google Drive offers similar pricing, charging $1.99 a month for 100GB and $9.99 for 1TB. Google also partners with Android and Chromebook manufacturers to offer customers bonus storage when they buy a device.

OneDrive’s price dive further puts the crunch on third-party services such as Dropbox and Box, both of which charge higher rates than the major tech companies. Those services generally offer more business-friendly features, though, such as collaboration tools and single sign-on.

source: mashable.com

 

Still independent.

We hope this story was worth your time. For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed Black-owned and independently run. We didn't get here by waiting on ad budgets that were never built to prioritize us. Our readers did that.

Corporate support for Black media has always been thin. Outlets like ours get roughly 1% of the $170 billion spent on U.S. advertising each year, and that margin is shrinking further as advertisers walk back the DEI-linked commitments they made in 2020. That's the backdrop. It's not why we're asking.

The wider picture isn't any steadier. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under, it's rarely the ones built to center a Black perspective from the ground up that get to stick around.

We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.

If you are able to, a recurring contribution does more for us than a single one-time gift, because it lets us plan the next investigation instead of just the next invoice. It takes about 30 seconds, no long form, no account. Thank you for continuing to support independent journalism and freedom of the press.

Give once Give monthly Support another way

Related Stories

Back to top