Microsoft will be giving back some, but not all, of the OneDrive storage that it was planning to take away from users of its cloud storage service.

In early November, the company made a surprising announcement to OneDrive users in two parts. First, the unlimited storage that came with Office 365 subscriptions was being cut back to 1TB. Second, the free storage tier was cut from 15GB to 5GB, and the 15GB bonus that comes from syncing your camera roll with OneDrive was also removed.

The change was unsurprisingly unpopular. The OneDrive UserVoice site, used by Microsoft to solicit feature requests and feedback, quickly recorded a new top complaint: more than 70,000 votes for the storage to be reinstated, dwarfing every other suggestion on the site.

The company is not backtracking on these changes. The unlimited storage will still be cut to 1TB next year (with a 12 month grace period for those with more than 1TB stored), and free storage is still being cut to 5GB. However, current users of OneDrive will be able to opt out of these changes. OneDrive users should receive an e-mail soon that contains a link. Clicking the link will enable them to retain their 15GB base storage, as well as their 15GB camera roll bonus. This won't, however, be a permanent feature—the storage must be claimed by the end of January—and it won't be available to new OneDrive users.

Update: You can preserve your storage here.

At the heart of this is a conflict between how people used the OneDrive storage, and Microsoft's objectives for the service. The Redmond firm does not want to be in the "dumb storage" business equivalent to that of, say, Dropbox. What Microsoft wants is for OneDrive to be the glue for other services with true value-adds—things like Office 365, Groove Music, and, more broadly, Windows 10—not just a dumping ground for all their files. The Office 365 deal, for example, should be seen as "Office 365 with a place to store all your documents," not "a place to store all your files, with the added bonus of access to Office 365."

For related reasons, the company still isn't offering anything more than 1TB; it shifts the focus too much onto storage. The economics also become less satisfactory; offer 1TB to Office 365 users, and most of them will use only a fraction of the space, making the average cost per customer quite low. Sell an upgrade from 1TB to 2TB, and you can be sure that many or most of the customers will be using at least 1TB, driving the average cost far higher. While this is a business that Microsoft could get into, it's not one that it necessarily wants to.

While the change is likely to be welcomed by many of OneDrive's users, it does still leave Microsoft's service at a disadvantage relative to its competitors for new users (or anyone who fails to apply for the 15GB size when e-mailed). This in turn reduces the service's network effects. With OneDrive as the preferred cloud storage system and an ample capacity for files, it becomes much more valuable for third-party services to offer OneDrive integration, and makes the OneDrive ecosystem as a whole more attractive. If the free tier is too small to be useful, putative users may find themselves looking elsewhere.

Listing image by Jeff Kubina