Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Dan Taylor/Heisenberg Media Microsoft's chief marketing officer, Chris Capossela, said last week that the company rushed the announcement of the end of unlimited OneDrive storage because "a major publication was going to print something that was very damaging and was not true."

The comments came during an interview on Windows Weekly, a podcast dedicated to Microsoft that is hosted by Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley, and Leo LaPorte. WinBeta was the first to spot the admission.

Microsoft initially promised unlimited OneDrive storage, meaning users who paid for the high-end version of the service were not limited by file size. The decision was adjusted, however, after some users started taking advantage of the unlimited claim. According to Microsoft, one user was storing 75 terabytes (75,000 gigabytes) worth of data.

Giving anyone and everyone unlimited storage was, for Microsoft, an appealing idea, but the economics did not work out.

"If anyone had seen the math, no one would have questioned the decision we made," Capossela said. "The economics were totally unsustainable."

But more than 70,000 users complained, and Microsoft backtracked on its new plan and offered more storage for a lower price.

"The way we did communication was very rushed because a major publication was going to print something that was very damaging and was not true, so we felt like we had to get in front of it," Capossela said. "We just weren't ready."

Capossela does not elaborate on what the "major publication" was — for what it's worth, The Wall Street Journal broke the story about the recall of unlimited storage — and he did not say what it would have been about, beyond OneDrive.

"We had given ourselves a couple more months to get everything lined up [for removing unlimited storage] so we could do it all in one fell swoop," he said. "We were just not ready."

Capossela said the decision to rush the announcement was made by him and Frank Shaw, Microsoft's communications chief. "Frank and I just couldn't let [the negative story] happen," he said. "We just didn't do a good enough job ... to beat the story and get the communications in the shape they needed to be."

The three presenters of Windows Weekly were, for a moment, left in silence by the acknowledgement. LaPorte then went on to congratulate Capossela on his honesty discussing the issue.