LIVE FROM GOOGLE I/O: Unlimited Google Drive Storage, Apps Unlimited Appears in the Admin Console

Taylor Gould, BetterCloud’s VP of Marketing, is reporting live from Google I/O, Google’s annual Developer Conference. Stay up to date with the latest Google I/O news here.

Today, during the Google I/O keynote, Sundar Pichai, Google’s SVP Android, Chrome and Apps, announced huge upgrades for Google Apps customers, namely unlimited Drive storage for $10 per user per month or $120 per user per year.

This unlimited storage is billed by Google as Google Drive for Work or Google Apps Unlimited and can be purchased through the Google Apps Admin Console: Admin Console > Billing > Upgrade to Google Apps Unlimited. You can also contact your Google Apps reseller for additional information. 

Google Drive for Work / Apps Unlimited includes all Google Apps for Business features as well as:

• Unlimited storage with up to 5TB file size
• Additional auditing specifically allowing administrators to view activity around moving, deleting or sharing files within or outside the company
• New security controls allowing administrators to set sync client, offline, Drive app and Add-ons settings at the Organizational Unit level
• Drive for Work includes Google Apps Vault, which has been expanded to provide search for all content stored in Drive

In addition to these premium features, all files uploaded to Drive will now be encrypted – not only from a user’s devices to Google and in transit between Google data centers, but also at rest on Google servers.

Google Drive for Work is a huge milestone for the Google Apps platform and ecosystem. As Google continues to build up its enterprise storage and collaboration solution, competitors like Box, Dropbox and others will face more and more obstacles – Google has the ability, technology, scale and established business to be able to offer unlimited storage without blinking an eye and we’re excited to see what the future has in store.

For more on Google Drive for Work / Google Apps Unlimited, see the following messaging from Google:

Google Apps Unlimited is the premium version of Google Apps which includes unlimited storage, Google Vault, and advanced Drive controls, auditing, and reporting features, in addition to everything that’s included with Google Apps for Business. Your users will never have to worry about running out of storage and as an administrator you gain additional insights and controls. Google Vault allows administrators to search and export Drive files, as well as search, export, archive, and set legal holds on email. Learn more

If you have existing Vault or Drive storage subscriptions, they will be automatically cancelled upon purchase of Google Apps Unlimited since you get unlimited storage and Vault for all users. Verify your current Vault configuration before upgrading to avoid unwanted data loss by following these instructions.

Important: As of now, you cannot downgrade from Google Apps Unlimited to Google Apps for Business. If you decide to replace Google Apps Unlimited with a different edition of Google Apps, you would need to cancel your Google Apps subscription and then sign up again, which could result in lost data. We will be adding the ability to downgrade to Google Apps for Business in an upcoming release.

We’ll continue to cover these updates as they unfold. Stay tuned!