The entire purpose of Bing Rewards is to—surprise!—reward you for using Bing. Usually, that entails earning points by conducting web searches and cashing in those points for gift cards and other goodies. But you don’t have to conduct a single Bing search to claim the latest juicy offering: Through February 28, any Bing Rewards member can claim 100GB of OneDrive cloud storage for absolutely free for two years—no searches or rewards points required.
(Update: You can snag a separate free 100GB of OneDrive storage if you’re a Dropbox user, as well—details below.)
The offer won’t entice Office 365 subscribers, who already enjoy an endless bounty of storage space in the sky, but this is a don’t-miss offer for any other OneDrive user. OneDrive’s free tier offers only 15GB of data, and 100GB plans typically cost $2 per month.
There are surprisingly few strings: You’ll obviously need a Microsoft account to claim the 100GB, but if you’re a Bing Rewards member you already have one. Accepting the offer gives OneDrive the right to send you promotional emails, though you may cancel them at any time. And as mentioned, the freebie storage disappears two years to the day after you claim it. Microsoft obviously hopes you’ll fill up the space and pay to keep using the extra gigs after the deadline, but be sure to read up on what happens when your cloud storage dissipates just in case.
Head over to your Bing Rewards dashboard and look for the “Free storage” header next to a OneDrive logo to get in on the action.
Update: The offer is now open to everyone worldwide, after initially being locked to U.S. residents only, Windows Central reports. (As do many, many users.) If you don’t see 100GB promotion in your Bing Dashboard, try this link after first signing into your Microsoft Account.
U.S. residents who are also Dropbox users can grab another free 100GB, but only for a year, by browsing here and verifying you have a Dropbox account.
The story behind the story: As Microsoft shifts to embrace services more and more, expect to see more hooks like this—the use of one service to entice you into using other Microsoft products and the greater Microsoft ecosystem. Now that Windows 8.1 with Bing (with Bing as the default search provider) is rolling out in low-cost devices that are often constrained storage-wise, using Bing Rewards to dangle gobs of OneDrive storage is a natural promotion. And once you’re signed up with Bing Rewards, you’re more likely to start using Microsoft’s search engine to claim more freebies, of course.
But who cares about all that? The important part is the free 100GB of cloud storage. Go get some!
[Via Windows Central]
Editor’s note: This article was published on 2/9/15, but updated to include news of the offer expanding internationally and the Dropbox offer.