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!

Of course, you provide justification for this, several of which are very valid. We all have too much information stored. But that’s because you told us that we have unlimited storage. Had you imposed some generous quota from early on, we all would have been more careful. But now, the onus is on us to clean up because you decided to change course. You say that more than 99% of the institutions have storage less than the limit. Again, I am not going to question you, because you know everything that is there to know! I know this because, you now suggest to me what to eat for breakfast and when to drive to work…

And to spring this on us when we are still dealing with COVID crisis and having no clear idea as to when this will come to pass… Whose idea was this?

To be fair, some of the plans you mention as alternatives look very reasonable in terms of fee per student per year license fee, but the one that will address our needs (based on our current storage) is a plan where annual license cost is $48 per student. That is simply not feasible!

I am aware that we are all reaching out to your staff to get more information so we can plan better. Poor front line folks, who are feeling the brunt of this. Based on my own past experiences, you are good at listening to the good folks from Higher Ed and respond and I hope this happens soon.

FWIW this is what I would like as an outcome:

• Grandfather the storage we currently have in some fashion. This is not at all unreasonable given that for a long I have heard “Why delete anything? Just Search”
• In return, we will go through the process of cleaning up our storage with the new tools you promise to give us. This frankly is a good thing for us too.
• I think many of us would be willing to pay a reasonable amount for additional storage over and above the grandfathered amount.
• However, we need a few more options than what you have. I, for one, would like a way to license pooled storage in increments of 500 GB or 1 TB at a reasonable price.

So, let us get to talking soon and come up with an amicable solution. The last thing we all need is more stress at this time, thinking about your plans and having to deal with nightmares with “100 TB” tormenting us.

It is quite possible, I am completely misinterpreting what you have said in your posts. I apologize if I went on a wrong track!