Rebranding News: Microsoft SkyDrive is now OneDrive

Rebranding, and the legality around the choice of brand name, increase in importance as the landgrab of names has claimed another casualty: Microsoft SkyDrive.  After a recent trademark dispute with BSkyB, Microsoft announced recently that SkyDrive will, as of today, take on the name OneDrive.

What does this mean for Microsoft? Although the complexities of naming have plagued the former brand, the Choice of OneDrive will make for an increased universal name, likening the cloud storage program to Xbox One and Microsoft OneNote.

Thanks to recent articles in TechCrunch and Wall Street Journal, we bring you the news release that Microsoft Officially Rebrands SkyDrive To OneDrive.

SkyDrive is dead, long live OneDrive. In January, Microsoft announced that it would rebrand its storage service to OneDrive following a trademark dispute with British pay-TV provider BSkyB. Starting today, the website, the mobile apps and the desktop apps all share the same OneDrive name.

In a blog post Wednesday, Microsoft said existing SkyDrive customers have nothing more to do than log in at onedrive.com.  That’s not all. Microsoft is also launching today a new referral program reminiscent of Dropbox’s referral system. If a friend signs up using your link, you get 500MB of free storage, up to a maximum of 10 friends or 5GB. Similarly, if you enable automatic photo upload on your Windows, iOS or Android phone, you can get up to 3GB of free storage.

Overall, OneDrive users can get up to 8GB of additional storage. Before today, the Android app didn’t have the photo backup feature. But today’s update brought this feature to Android phones as well.

Consumer cloud storage is becoming cheaper as many tech giants now have their own services. Google has Google Drive, Apple has iCloud, Microsoft has OneDrive, etc. They will now have to differentiate from each other with better apps, better features and probably marketing.

What do you think of the new name? As your source for rebranding news and brand insight, IDeas BIG (Brand Identity Group) loves to hear about your opinions on the new name.  Please comment, bookmark, and share your views using the tools below.