Google recently announced a substantial change to its service offering. Google will end unlimited storage for the academic community starting July 2022. The new storage model will provide CU Boulder with a limited amount of storage — much less than what the campus consumes today — which will be pooled and shared across all CU Boulder Google accounts.
Given this new cap on Google storage, it will be necessary for CU Boulder Google users to reduce the amount of data stored in Google in order for the campus to fit under the cap. Most of the Google storage space is currently consumed by non-Google file types (e.g. Microsoft documents, PDFs, video, photos, etc.). Between now and July 2022, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) will encourage users of Google Drive to move their non-Google files to other campus storage solutions such as Microsoft OneDrive, Teams or SharePoint. The OIT website has more guidance on campus-supported storage solutions. OIT is currently evaluating file migration tools to assist in the migration process and will provide more information to Google users soon.
This change is part of a larger move to rebrand G Suite for Education as Google Workspace for Education. OIT has been anticipating a shifting storage landscape; however, this change in Google’s commitment towards serving higher education is frustrating. OIT has an active project, Storage Futures, which is tasked with exploring and providing storage solutions that will meet CU Boulder’s future file storage needs. This future will include a comprehensive approach that provides integrated storage solutions for the CU Boulder community along with best practices and policies around managing files, which includes deleting files you no longer need.
If you have questions about your Google account or campus storage solutions, please contact the IT Service Center at oithelp@colorado.edu or call 303-735-4357.
