February 2021 archive

Dear Google, I am concerned about your recent announcement for Higher EDs

Dear Google (I know it is stupid to address this way!)

We, along with thousands of other Higher Eds and K-12s have enjoyed the benefits of the tools that you have made available for free. Of course, it vastly simplified and streamlined the administrivia associated with maintaining Email, Calendar and File systems, but the educational benefits of such tools have been significant. Most notably, the ease of collaboration in Docs and Sheets is simply remarkable. And we, Wellesley College, have been the beneficiaries of this for the past 10 years.

So, when we all received an email about some changes that Google is about to make, at first glance, it all looked harmless and step in the right direction. Except, when I read that you will impose a pooled storage of 100 TB per institution. This shocked many of us whose institutions have a lot more. How much more depends on how long you have been using Google Apps. You said you will begin enforcing this in July 2022, thank you for giving us some extra time, but it ain’t fair! When we all signed up, you told us that the service was free and we had unlimited storage. And now you want to change this, and we all understand that you wouldn’t do it without a careful legal review of the contracts, so it must be within your rights to do this!

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