Beginning in June, Google Docs Will Count Against Users’ Storage Limits ⇥ blog.google

Jose Pastor and Shimrit Ben-Yair of Google:

Also starting June 1, any new Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms or Jamboard file will begin counting toward your free 15 GB of allotted storage or any additional storage provided through Google One. Existing files within these products will not count toward storage, unless they’re modified on or after June 1. You can learn more in our Help Center.

David Smith:

How does Google even regulate the *size* of such documents? As an entirely internal format, we just have to take their word for it.

Google Drive currently does not display file sizes for any documents created using Google’s productivity suite; it just says they are zero bytes, since they currently are not counted against storage limits. A text document surely is not many megabytes large, but the storage and use of these files exists entirely within Google’s parameters.

These changes to storage policies also apply to Workspace and G-Suite users, including in education and enterprise. That means businesses that committed themselves to Google’s ecosystem will now have to either buy much more storage from the company at indeterminate cost — since they cannot estimate the amount of space they currently use — or have to source, test, and implement a competitor, all while many businesses are dependent on remote access.