Summary:
Wellesley College, a long-time Google Workspace for Education advocate, is facing a growing storage challenge. The era of “free and unlimited” is over, and simply asking users to clean up isn’t working. We’ve paid for more space, but the clutter persists, and Google’s technical solutions have been MIA for four years.
From overflowing Google Photos with no API cleanup options (and a looming 2026 free storage deadline) to cumbersome, error-prone methods for managing alumni Drive files, we need help. Telling us to just communicate better with users isn’t the answer – we’re doing that!
Our Plea: Give us the technical tools – APIs for deleting Photos, programmatic file deletion for Drive, and even intelligent suggestions via Gemini. We need real solutions to manage our storage effectively. Google, you have the power to fix this!
Here is the podcast (thanks, Google Notebook LM)
We at Wellesley College have been long-time beneficiaries of Google Workspace for Education, dating back to its early student-only iteration and its subsequent campus-wide adoption 14 years ago. The platform has been invaluable.
However, the Google of today differs significantly from the Google of the past. The initial promise of “free and unlimited storage” inevitably led to the current reality. A few years ago, we were informed of impending storage restrictions and the introduction of charges, a particularly unwelcome development amidst existing financial pressures. While we understood the rationale, simply urging users to clean up their storage, without any enforcement mechanisms, has proven ineffective, as anyone in this field knows. Consequently, we invested in additional storage to accommodate current usage and anticipated growth, but the storage cleanup we hoped for hasn’t materialized despite repeated requests to our users. For the past four years, we’ve been seeking technical solutions from Google to address this challenge, but progress has been lacking.
Google Photos
Despite our clear communication that College-provided systems are for College business, separating personal and professional use can be challenging. This is particularly evident in Google Photos, where we have accumulated a significant amount of user storage. While Google offered free storage based on past usage with promises of cleanup tools, we are now facing the January 2026 deadline for this free offer without the necessary automation through APIs to manage this storage.
A Google technical representative suggested, “Clearly communicate storage limits and deadlines for action to users.” With all due respect, sir, we are well-versed in communication strategies and have been actively employing them.
Our Ask: Provide APIs to programmatically delete Google Photos. This would allow us to enforce cleanup by automatically removing user photos after a specified deadline. If these APIs cannot be provided at least six months before the free offer expires, we request an extension of the free offer until their availability.
Google Drive
Our experience with alumni accounts, going back to 2012, highlights another storage challenge. These accounts collectively occupy substantial Drive space. We communicated the need for cleanup and our intention to implement a 20GB storage quota by a specific date. However, this was complicated by the fact that many alumnae had shared senior thesis documents with their advisors, who understandably did not want these files deleted. We paused the quota implementation to allow sufficient time for alumnae and advisors to migrate these files to shared drives owned by the advisors.
Subsequently, we identified Drive files belonging to unresponsive alumnae based on size, last accessed date, and last login time. Given that files could reside in various locations, not solely within user-owned folders, we utilized the gam tool to obtain a comprehensive list of all files owned by a user and delete them individually.
While this method technically works, it is exceptionally time-consuming and prone to “backend errors,” rendering it unreliable for large-scale cleanup.
The response from the technical representative included suggestions such as “Strategically adjusting user quota settings. Lowering quotas can effectively put users’ Drive files into a read-only status if they don’t remove excess data within the communicated timeframe.” As previously communicated, we have already implemented quotas. However, since these quotas don’t prevent login or Gmail usage, many alumni are simply using Drive as an archive.
Another suggestion was to “transfer a user’s files to a new account by renaming the original one… Once the data transfer is complete, the original account can be deleted.” This approach presents several issues. Firstly, we do not wish to delete the user’s account. Secondly, even after transferring files, the user might still fall under the quota and continue using Gmail. Most importantly, “transferring” files does not result in any storage savings.
Our Ask: Provide a viable technical solution for programmatically deleting thousands of files within a reasonable timeframe. Ideally, offer a mechanism to archive these files to more cost-effective storage solutions like Amazon Glacier in their native formats, rather than converting them to Microsoft Office formats. While we are aware of third-party backup solutions that support native formats, their per-terabyte cost is double that of Google storage, making them an unsustainable option.
The “Gravy”: Imagine the power of integrating Gemini to proactively assist users in identifying deletable files within their Google Photos and Drive. Gemini could analyze file usage, access dates, and other criteria to suggest files for removal. A simple “Approve Gemini’s suggestions” button would then initiate the deletion process.
In conclusion, while we are committed to cleaning up our Google storage, relying solely on user action is not a practical solution. We urgently need robust technical tools from Google to effectively manage and reduce our storage footprint. Google, with your vast resources and expertise, you are uniquely positioned to provide these much-needed solutions.