Welcome to the bigger, better, faster SkyDrive!
We know it's been mighty quiet on the SkyDrive blog, but we've been hard at work on a new version that we're proud to announce today! — You've made two things clear since our first release: You want more space; and you want SkyDrive where you are.
Context & Ripple Effects
The October 2007 round of SkyDrive updates was incremental maintenance; this release answers the two demands the team says dominated its feedback — more storage space and availability "where you are," i.e. beyond the original launch markets.
How the story travelled matters as much as the announcement: LiveSide's same-day pickup frames it entirely as a question about a 5GB free tier, a figure Microsoft's own post never states. The quota number, real or speculated, is the hook the press ran with.
First-order effects
- Existing users get more free space and new markets get access immediately, converting months of accumulated feature requests into retention goodwill for Windows Live.
- LiveSide's unconfirmed 5GB figure now functions as a public benchmark: if the actual increase lands below it, the shortfall becomes the story instead.
Second-order effects
- Each raise of SkyDrive's free ceiling resets what consumers expect a hosted-storage account to include, pressuring any competing consumer storage service with a smaller quota to match or explain the difference.
- Storage shifts from being a product line toward being a Windows Live retention lever — every gigabyte added raises the migration cost of moving personal files off the platform.
Third-order effects
- If quota escalation becomes the standing acquisition playbook, consumer cloud storage tilts toward players large enough to subsidize capacity indefinitely, squeezing smaller paid-storage services primarily on price.
The trend: Portal-era platforms are turning free storage into a lock-in asset, with quota size replacing features as the competitive currency of personal cloud files.