Google is switching legacy G Suite users to pooled Workspace storage
Jess Weatherbed is a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.
People who are holding on to free G Suite legacy accounts will soon lose their individual storage allotment perks. In an email seen by The Verge, Google has started informing G Suite legacy free edition plan users that they will be switched to pooled storage that’s “shared across all users within your organization” starting May 1st.
G Suite was rebranded as Workspace in 2020. G Suite legacy free edition, which Google stopped offering in 2012, provides each user with 15GB of free allocated storage and was offered for personal use — making it ideal for families or groups that need to share a collective domain. Existing users have been permitted to access Workspace services at no additional charge, but Google says it’s now making this change because pooled storage provides a “simpler and more flexible way to manage storage.”
“Google Workspace customers have had the benefit of pooled storage for years, and now we’re rolling it out to users with this legacy offering,” Google spokesperson Jenny Thomson told The Verge.
No action is required for the switch according to Google, and users cannot opt out of the pooled storage transition. The total amount of storage allocated to the entire G Suite account won’t be reduced, but if more storage is required then it can be purchased “at a discount” starting at increments of 100GB, which typically costs $15. Google hasn’t specified how large this discount will be.
Storage limitations can still be set for each user within the G Suite account after the transition to prevent the collective storage pool from being hogged by individual users. These limits will have to be manually assigned by an account admin, however.
Google attempted to scrap the individual storage allocations before, initially announcing in January 2022 that all users would need to migrate to new subscription plans with pooled storage allotments. Google later backtracked and said it would allow people to keep their existing accounts free of charge — including subscriptions that allowed users to extend their individual storage allowance — but only for personal use.
The transition creates more work for admins who prefer the status quo, but it’s a beneficial change for groups that want to share underused storage allocations with other users.
