Back in November of this past year, Google announced that it would say Goodbye to unlimited, free storage for Workspace users because they really didn’t use it and because it’s apparently getting tight on storage space. It gave schools and businesses until June 1, 2021, to make peace with this and offered them the ability to upgrade for a cost in addition to their existing monthly payment. Now, the company has extended that date until February 1, 2022 – that’s about 8 extra months!
I’m not sure why Google decided to make the change, but it likely has something to do with the ever-shifting landscape of G Suite to Workspace on top of the already stressful pandemic and all of the change that’s been necessary with it. This update applies to any newly created Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, or Jamboard files. After the aforementioned date, these will officially count toward your organization’s Drive storage quota. Files created before this date will not unless they’re modified on or after the new February deadline. This means that your existing, archival documents that you don’t mess with are essentially stored for free, but the moment you want to make them an active part of your workload again, you’ll need to consider them a paid piece of content.
Google previously said Goodbye to Unlimited for personal Google accounts as well, and I had a feeling it would follow up by snatching it away from Workspace users right afterward. I should mention specifically that this updated deadline does not apply to high-quality Google Photos – those will still begin to count against your quota on June 1, 2021. Google says that most users won’t even be affected by these changes, since as I previously stated, most were not even using the full amount of storage that comes for free with their account.
According to Google, 4.3 million GB of data is being added per day across its Gmail, Drive, and Photos services – wow! As a reminder, Admins will get access to new tools to help manage storage across their users, similar to the storage quota indicator that rolled out to standard Google account holders last year. You can check out the Apps usage user report to learn more about this. Everything discussed here today applies to all Workspace tiers, as well as those remaining G Suite licenses.
Newsletter Signup
