8 ms·

Google Workspace for Education storage policy changes

37 points by decrypt 6y ago

socceroos 6y ago
Is Google running out of storage? In the last 18 months they've seemed to complete a 180 degree turn on their "store all the things" policy.
- kjakm 6y ago
  I wonder if they're getting a lot less value out of the data than they thought they would (I'm presuming data to aid in targeting is how they justify free unlimited storage)?
  - tempest_ 6y ago
    Likely that and when they made the initial offer they made an estimate of average storage per user which was probably correct at the time but has changed as users have begun to increasing use more cloud storage with larger files.
  - dawnerd 6y ago
    Those business agreements for faults supposedly didn’t allow them to use the data that way anyways. Not sure I could trust it though. Everything I upload (well just about) gets encrypted before uploaded.
  - tjohns 6y ago
    Google doesn't collect any data from Workspace for Education users for targeted ads. From https://support.google.com/a/answer/139019 https://support.google.com/a/answer/139019: "Google Workspace for Education does not collect student data for advertising purposes. We scan Gmail to keep users’ mail secure. Scanning includes virus and spam protection and is 100% automated. We scan all incoming email, relevant search results, and features, such as Gmail Priority Inbox." (Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on Workspace or Ads - I don't represent these teams.)
    - happynacho 6y ago
      >Google doesn't collect any data from Workspace for Education users for targeted ads. That doesn't mean that they don't collect data for other purposes, which include analytics and tracking on how to change the service and said data is still valuable.
- IceWreck 6y ago
  * Google Photos Unlimited has shut down. * Google Drive unlimited for businesses has shut down. * Google Drive unlimited for education has shut down. * Google Drive files are now deleted if you've not accessed your account recently (no definition of recent)
  - jorams 6y ago
    > no definition of recent They've been very clear that it's 2 years, and they will notify you before they remove anything.
- lmkg 6y ago
  Could be GDPR? Storing all the data on everyone now has more potential cost than just the hard drive.
- gruez 6y ago
  My guess would be abuse. If you check ebay there's many offers of "lifetime unlimited google drive" accounts that use google education. A similar exploit existed for gsuite. If you bought a 5 (or 10?) seat license then your entire organization would get unlimited storage. That was discontinued as well.
  - easton 6y ago
    That part was never even enforced. I have a single-seat GSuite (or, now Google Workspace Plus) account and have unlimited storage. It's the only thing keeping me on GSuite, honestly, because I really prefer Outlook to Gmail.
    - darrylb42 6y ago
      I always thought single seat accounts couldn't get unlimited storage, the cap was just higher.
- philote 6y ago
  Maybe they're finally capitalizing on all their locked-in users.
  - s3r3nity 6y ago
    idk why this is getting downvoted - it's a legitimate criticism of the way Google will enter a market with low prices (or free services,) steal market share, and then boost prices when they have market power and/or significant user anchoring. Ex: see all the Google Photos competitors who are doing the "I told you so" roadshow when they announced the end of unlimited storage for free. Other apps couldn't compete and/or died out, and so with market share in hand Google could "raise" prices. Further, Google doesn't hide that they want to grow "services" revenue, and had mentioned it in previous investor calls. I'm guessing they're seeing the success Tim Cook has had with diversifying revenue and growing services like crazy, and now they want to leverage that channel for growth.
IceWreck 6y ago
> We recently announced a new storage model, which provides schools and universities with a baseline of 100 TB of pooled storage shared across all users. What ? I know me and my friends alone use 5TB each. And our uni has around 8000 students. 100TB for everyone combined is ridiculously low.
- kylehotchkiss 6y ago
  Is that 5TB school work, or are you using it for personal files too?
  - IceWreck 6y ago
    About 40 GB is school work, the rest is personal files. Huge music collections, comics, course dumps, photos, downloaded youtube channels, etc.
    - float4 6y ago
      And you're genuinely wondering why they are imposing limits? Sure, the new limits are <40GB/student, but most students are probably only using like 1GB of storage anyway. They write some essays, store some PDF's, share some Google Docs documents, use a music streaming service, and don't download YouTube videos.
    - meibo 6y ago
      I don't think you can complain about this while using your school-supplied account for that much private data. Seems acceptable for schools to start enforcing acceptable-use policies that exclude using these accounts for anything but schoolwork if it saves money and resources to spend on other things.
      - vangelis 6y ago
        Before abundant cloud storage somebody with internship money had to buy their own NAS. Kids these days.
jerrac 6y ago
If any Google employee reads this, how do you check how much data is in a specific drive folder? I haven't found an official method. I need to free up space, thanks to the new storage policy. It's kinda hard to track down which directories are using the most data when there is no way to check...
- IceWreck 6y ago
  Rclone's size command does this. rclone size gdrive_remote:/path/to/folder
  - rmorey 6y ago
    rclone also has the really nifty ncdu command: https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_ncdu/ https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_ncdu/
    - jerrac 6y ago
      Just tried that. It works. Thanks!
  - jerrac 6y ago
    Nice. That worked well. Thanks!
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  I'm not a Google employee, but as far as I'm aware, there isn't one, and frankly, at this point I have to wonder if the lack of such a feature is a malicious way of preventing users from managing their storage utilization. I've also had to resort to using rclone for this, which is absurd. P.S. And don't forget: the data in the Trash folder counts against your quota. So if you use rclone to get folder sizes and start deleting things, you better be sure to empty the trash. And that gets very difficult if the Trash has a lot of items in it, as the web interface will only delete a limited number of items from the Trash at a time. As a result, you might also want to use rclone to delete permanently and bypass the Trash entirely. Once again, while I tend to assume incompetence over malice for most things, in this case, you really gotta wonder...
float4 6y ago
> baseline of 100 TB > Institutions with greater than 20,000 [...] active users [...] will be provided with additional storage. So >=5GB per user. Not great, not terrible. I guess most students who use their Google student account for educational purposes only don't need more than that. Might get tricky for teachers and some STEM-students however.
kylehotchkiss 6y ago
Are hard drives harder or more expensive to come by these days due to COVID related production issues? Or is storage not decreasing in price according to their benchmark? Google Workspace only offers 30gb in their lower priced plans ($6/month) which seems a bit less too.
- kazen44 6y ago
  hard disk storage has been static in terms of drive size of the last couple of years. 12TB is roughly the maximum economic size you can get right now.
  - rkagerer 6y ago
    Counterpoint: I just upgraded a small fleet of drives to 16GB models because that was the optimal price/GB after checking a multitude of supply channels (at least at 7200 RPM). My last upgrade was to 4TB and I've no doubt my next in a few years will be to 64 (though might be a different technology eg. SSD if the relative economics change).
dawnerd 6y ago
It’s pretty obvious why. It’s the people from r/datahoarders and r/plex that were abusing drive and to a further extent really cheap eBay sold accounts.
- throwaway17824 6y ago
  That has to be a reason. I use somebody's Plex share that has 0.55PB of videos on Google Drive. Someone on Reddit famously bragged about having 1.6PB. The person running my Plex uses an unlimited Enterprise plan, so this won't stop them.
  - deepl_derber 6y ago
    I think you're being naive if you think they won't roll this out to Enterprise soon as well.
    - dawnerd 6y ago
      Already has but it isn't enforced yet. According to what their new "as much storage as you need" you have to ask them to increase it which I assume means they'll look at bandwidth usage and see if theres any one user abusing. Good luck if its just a one person "enterprise" too. It's kinda like what Dropbox "unlimited" is.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

37 points by decrypt 6y ago

Is Google running out of storage? In the last 18 months they've seemed to complete a 180 degree turn on their "store all the things" policy.

kjakm 6y ago
I wonder if they're getting a lot less value out of the data than they thought they would (I'm presuming data to aid in targeting is how they justify free unlimited storage)?
- tempest_ 6y ago
  Likely that and when they made the initial offer they made an estimate of average storage per user which was probably correct at the time but has changed as users have begun to increasing use more cloud storage with larger files.
- dawnerd 6y ago
  Those business agreements for faults supposedly didn’t allow them to use the data that way anyways. Not sure I could trust it though. Everything I upload (well just about) gets encrypted before uploaded.
- tjohns 6y ago
  Google doesn't collect any data from Workspace for Education users for targeted ads. From https://support.google.com/a/answer/139019 https://support.google.com/a/answer/139019: "Google Workspace for Education does not collect student data for advertising purposes. We scan Gmail to keep users’ mail secure. Scanning includes virus and spam protection and is 100% automated. We scan all incoming email, relevant search results, and features, such as Gmail Priority Inbox." (Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on Workspace or Ads - I don't represent these teams.)
  - happynacho 6y ago
    >Google doesn't collect any data from Workspace for Education users for targeted ads. That doesn't mean that they don't collect data for other purposes, which include analytics and tracking on how to change the service and said data is still valuable.
IceWreck 6y ago
* Google Photos Unlimited has shut down. * Google Drive unlimited for businesses has shut down. * Google Drive unlimited for education has shut down. * Google Drive files are now deleted if you've not accessed your account recently (no definition of recent)
- jorams 6y ago
  > no definition of recent They've been very clear that it's 2 years, and they will notify you before they remove anything.
lmkg 6y ago
Could be GDPR? Storing all the data on everyone now has more potential cost than just the hard drive.
gruez 6y ago
My guess would be abuse. If you check ebay there's many offers of "lifetime unlimited google drive" accounts that use google education. A similar exploit existed for gsuite. If you bought a 5 (or 10?) seat license then your entire organization would get unlimited storage. That was discontinued as well.
- easton 6y ago
  That part was never even enforced. I have a single-seat GSuite (or, now Google Workspace Plus) account and have unlimited storage. It's the only thing keeping me on GSuite, honestly, because I really prefer Outlook to Gmail.
  - darrylb42 6y ago
    I always thought single seat accounts couldn't get unlimited storage, the cap was just higher.
philote 6y ago
Maybe they're finally capitalizing on all their locked-in users.
- s3r3nity 6y ago
  idk why this is getting downvoted - it's a legitimate criticism of the way Google will enter a market with low prices (or free services,) steal market share, and then boost prices when they have market power and/or significant user anchoring. Ex: see all the Google Photos competitors who are doing the "I told you so" roadshow when they announced the end of unlimited storage for free. Other apps couldn't compete and/or died out, and so with market share in hand Google could "raise" prices. Further, Google doesn't hide that they want to grow "services" revenue, and had mentioned it in previous investor calls. I'm guessing they're seeing the success Tim Cook has had with diversifying revenue and growing services like crazy, and now they want to leverage that channel for growth.

IceWreck 6y ago

> We recently announced a new storage model, which provides schools and universities with a baseline of 100 TB of pooled storage shared across all users. What ? I know me and my friends alone use 5TB each. And our uni has around 8000 students. 100TB for everyone combined is ridiculously low.

kylehotchkiss 6y ago
Is that 5TB school work, or are you using it for personal files too?
- IceWreck 6y ago
  About 40 GB is school work, the rest is personal files. Huge music collections, comics, course dumps, photos, downloaded youtube channels, etc.
  - float4 6y ago
    And you're genuinely wondering why they are imposing limits? Sure, the new limits are <40GB/student, but most students are probably only using like 1GB of storage anyway. They write some essays, store some PDF's, share some Google Docs documents, use a music streaming service, and don't download YouTube videos.
  - meibo 6y ago
    I don't think you can complain about this while using your school-supplied account for that much private data. Seems acceptable for schools to start enforcing acceptable-use policies that exclude using these accounts for anything but schoolwork if it saves money and resources to spend on other things.
    - vangelis 6y ago
      Before abundant cloud storage somebody with internship money had to buy their own NAS. Kids these days.

jerrac 6y ago

If any Google employee reads this, how do you check how much data is in a specific drive folder? I haven't found an official method. I need to free up space, thanks to the new storage policy. It's kinda hard to track down which directories are using the most data when there is no way to check...

IceWreck 6y ago
Rclone's size command does this. rclone size gdrive_remote:/path/to/folder
- rmorey 6y ago
  rclone also has the really nifty ncdu command: https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_ncdu/ https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_ncdu/
  - jerrac 6y ago
    Just tried that. It works. Thanks!
- jerrac 6y ago
  Nice. That worked well. Thanks!
CarelessExpert 6y ago
I'm not a Google employee, but as far as I'm aware, there isn't one, and frankly, at this point I have to wonder if the lack of such a feature is a malicious way of preventing users from managing their storage utilization. I've also had to resort to using rclone for this, which is absurd. P.S. And don't forget: the data in the Trash folder counts against your quota. So if you use rclone to get folder sizes and start deleting things, you better be sure to empty the trash. And that gets very difficult if the Trash has a lot of items in it, as the web interface will only delete a limited number of items from the Trash at a time. As a result, you might also want to use rclone to delete permanently and bypass the Trash entirely. Once again, while I tend to assume incompetence over malice for most things, in this case, you really gotta wonder...

float4 6y ago

> baseline of 100 TB > Institutions with greater than 20,000 [...] active users [...] will be provided with additional storage. So >=5GB per user. Not great, not terrible. I guess most students who use their Google student account for educational purposes only don't need more than that. Might get tricky for teachers and some STEM-students however.

kylehotchkiss 6y ago

Are hard drives harder or more expensive to come by these days due to COVID related production issues? Or is storage not decreasing in price according to their benchmark? Google Workspace only offers 30gb in their lower priced plans ($6/month) which seems a bit less too.

kazen44 6y ago
hard disk storage has been static in terms of drive size of the last couple of years. 12TB is roughly the maximum economic size you can get right now.
- rkagerer 6y ago
  Counterpoint: I just upgraded a small fleet of drives to 16GB models because that was the optimal price/GB after checking a multitude of supply channels (at least at 7200 RPM). My last upgrade was to 4TB and I've no doubt my next in a few years will be to 64 (though might be a different technology eg. SSD if the relative economics change).

dawnerd 6y ago

It’s pretty obvious why. It’s the people from r/datahoarders and r/plex that were abusing drive and to a further extent really cheap eBay sold accounts.

throwaway17824 6y ago
That has to be a reason. I use somebody's Plex share that has 0.55PB of videos on Google Drive. Someone on Reddit famously bragged about having 1.6PB. The person running my Plex uses an unlimited Enterprise plan, so this won't stop them.
- deepl_derber 6y ago
  I think you're being naive if you think they won't roll this out to Enterprise soon as well.
  - dawnerd 6y ago
    Already has but it isn't enforced yet. According to what their new "as much storage as you need" you have to ask them to increase it which I assume means they'll look at bandwidth usage and see if theres any one user abusing. Good luck if its just a one person "enterprise" too. It's kinda like what Dropbox "unlimited" is.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]