Microsoft just announced that SkyDrive is now officially OneDrive, and available in over 100 languages at www.onedrive.com or by logging in to your former SkyDrive account. Last year, after fighting in court over European trademark rights to the SkyDrive name with BSkyB and losing, Microsoft had a change of heart about an appeal and agreed to change the SkyDrive name.
Then, in January, Microsoft announced the OneDrive name, and today the name change takes effect. For those expecting big changes or new features along with the name change, there aren’t many. Android users will gain automatic backup of their camera rolls if they install the OneDrive app, and as we told you, Microsoft is marketing some chances to increase your OneDrive storage for free, according to a blog post announcing the changeover at blog.onedrive.com:
To celebrate the official launch of OneDrive, today we will also give 100,000 people 100 GB of free storage for 1 year. That’s 10 PB of free storage—enough storage space for a photo of everyone on the planet. If you want to be one of those 100,000, keep an eye on @OneDrive for clues.
We are excited to share OneDrive with you today, and look forward to hearing what you think. For more details on how to get started, including step by step instructions, just visit www.OneDrive.com.
While we’re glad to get the name change behind us, it is a bit disappointing that OneDrive doesn’t have more new to offer (although we’re expecting co-owned folders anytime), and it’s going to take a while to make the name change in all of Microsoft’s properties, only last week Microsoft added changes to Windows 8.1 to include a SkyDrive sync icon to the taskbar. Now that the name change is official, though, are you satisfied with the service? Do you use it regularly, or do you prefer Box or Dropbox (or Mega, or….). What are your favorite features, and what features are missing?
(note that while the official blog post is now live, www.onedrive.com is still resolving to the preview, and it may take some time before the changes actually occur)
(also, while we’re waiting for the site to go live, you can download and install new versions of the Windows Phone app or the iOS app, an Android app is “coming soon”)