Dear Colleague,
As you know, recent efforts to adapt to the new storage pricing approach imposed by Google have drawn focus to how we fund technology and tools at Stanford.
The community’s response has highlighted the importance and complexity of the matter, prompting us to pivot our approach. Last fall, we paused implementation to escalate discussion to the top levels of university leadership for further review.
We are writing to inform you that after careful consideration, a decision has been made.
- Starting September 1, 2025, a storage limit of 5 terabytes (TB) will be applied to each My Drive and shared drive. This new threshold supersedes any previously announced storage limit.
- Those who require more than 5 TB may purchase extra storage through the university at a rate of $0.15 per GB annually.
Next steps
With this clear guidance in place, we’re ready to announce these changes and roll out new resources.
- A University IT news article sharing this guidance will be published and distributed on January 23, 2025.
- We will update our University IT web resources to reflect these new storage limits and dates.
- When the storage order form becomes available March 1, 2025, we’ll send a targeted email to those individuals affected by the 5 TB limit and provide information on options.
- We will continue to work closely with Google Workspace Campus Partners to help support those individuals who want to migrate data or purchase more storage.
Funding model
This revised plan acknowledges that Google Workspace functions as a critical utility needed to support our administrative, academic, and research needs at Stanford. As such, it is appropriate for the university to significantly subsidize this broadly used utility. However, for a very small number of groups with extremely large storage needs (more than 5 TB), the university will offer a premium service on a cost-recovery basis.
Update on Microsoft storage
A similar 5 TB storage limit will be applied to Microsoft OneDrive accounts and also Teams/SharePoint accounts. More details will be provided soon; however, currently only six Stanford M365 accounts exceed the proposed limit.
Again, we appreciate your partnership. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Google Workspace Optimization Project team