Microsoft’s OneDrive goes online, offers 100GB of free storage to celebrate

Microsoft’s rebranding of SkyDrive has gone into effect worldwide, along with new features and extra storage options for both existing and new users.

The Redmond giant announced OneDrive as the new title for its cloud storage service last month and has now made it the default for users worldwide.

The rebranding will go into effect across Microsoft’s Windows 8, Windows Vista and Mac apps today, and also on the mobile and Xbox versions. Existing and new users will be able to access OneDrive at its redesigned website, and will also be able to gather an additional 5GB of storage by referring up to ten friends that sign up for the service, for a total of 12GB of free storage.

Additionally, Microsoft is launching monthly plans for those that want extra storage and more flexibility over how they use that storage. If that wasn’t enough, 100,000 people selected randomly will be given 100 GB of free storage that’s valid for one year, which is considerably more than the temporary storage boosts offered by competing services like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Box (though a full year less in duration.)

For Android users, the company has upgraded its official client to include a camera backup feature for automatically backing up both photos and videos, which was recently introduced in the iOS version of the app. Enabling the camera backup option will grant users an additional 3GB of storage, which will be permanent even if one turns off the auto upload feature after enabling it, and is applicable to the iOS and Windows Phone apps as well.