Google announces changes to upcoming Google Workspace storage policies timeline: Here’s all you need to know

Google has announced an update to its Workspace storage policies which will come into effect from June 2021.

“We’re extending the previously announced timeframe for upcoming changes to the Google Workspace storage policy,” Google said in a post.

It is extending the timeline for newly created documents across Workspace platforms in February 2022. There has been no change to its policies regarding high-quality content.

The tech giant last year announced various changes to its Workspace storage policies. It had announced that it will no longer offer free unlimited storage for photos and videos backed up in high quality on Google Photos.

“Starting June 1, 2021, any new photos or videos uploaded to Google Photos or Google Drive in High quality will count toward the storage limits for users in your domain,” it had said.

There has been no change to this timeline. High-quality photos will count towards the Drive storage quota beginning June 1, 2021.

It had previously also announced that starting June 1, 2021, any newly created Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, and Jamboard files will also count toward the storage limits for users in an admin’s domain.

It has extended this deadline to February 1, 2022.

From February 2022, “Any newly created Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, or Jamboard files will count toward storage. Existing files within these products will not count toward storage, unless they’re modified on or after February 1, 2022,” it said.

The tech giant further said that it has extended the timeline to put into place new tools to help users identify and manage how storage is used and allocated before the policy goes into effect.

“We recently announced changes to the pooled storage policy for Workspace for Education customers. As a part of these updates, to empower Google Workspace admins to adapt to this model and optimise their storage, we will provide new admin tools to identify and manage how storage is used and allocated before the policy goes into effect. We’ve decided to delay the count of Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, or Jamboard files count toward storage quotas until that tooling is in place,” it said.