UPDATE: 2023/04/04 05:48 EST BY TIMI CANTISANO

Google rolls back changes

Google has issued an update through its Twitter account, sharing that it will roll back changes and explore new solutions.

UPDATE: 2023/04/03 07:03 EST BY TIMI CANTISANO

Google's response when asked about the limit on Drive:

  • To maintain strong performance and reliability, individual users are limited to 5 million total created items in their Google Drive.
  • Individual users attempting to create more than 5 million files will receive in-product notifications letting them know they’ve reached their file limit.
  • This doesn’t limit how many items can be in Drive, it limits how many items one user can create in any Drive.
  • This limit does not impact the vast majority of our users' ability to use their Google storage.
  • It is a safeguard to prevent misuse of our system in a way that might impact the stability and safety of the system.
  • In practice, the number of impacted users here is vanishingly small.
  • If and when users come across this limit, they can contact support which will help them address this issue.

Google makes it pretty straightforward and easy when it comes to using its cloud storage service, offering different tiers, with the base plan of 15GB being absolutely free. If you're looking to size up, you can purchase 100GB, 200GB, or go as high as 10TB on a personal plan. Those looking for something higher can sign up for even more. While you'd think you'd be able to use this storage how you'd like, you'd actually be wrong, as some users have received rude awakenings from Google letting them know that they're over the company's internal storage limit.

Now, it's not what you think, these people have not crossed their storage limit, but have instead, uploaded more than five million individual files to the service, which apparently, isn't allowed. According to a user on Reddit, Google is imposing a five million file count limit on Google Drive accounts, even if you have plenty of storage space to spare. While news of this is just popping up for some, apparently, it's an issue that has been going on for some time, with news outlet Ars Technica sharing that these kinds of messages have been around as early as February on the Google Issue Tracker.

While the initial error message was vague, with the service just stating: "The limit for the number of items, whether trashed or not, created by this account has been exceeded." A later revision brought more clarity, with users receiving "Error 403: This account has exceeded the creation limit of 5 million items. To create more items, move items to the trash and delete them forever." As you can imagine, this limit is quite surprising, considering that there is nothing that talks about this in the terms of service.

On the flip side, there likely aren't that many personal accounts that will upload five million files to the service, but as explained in the Reddit thread, it can be done. Ultimately, it's really about gaining clarity on this situation and also providing more warning to users, especially when there's no easy way to really circumvent the limit. As such, we've reached out to Google to see if they can provide any extra information here, and we'll make sure to update this article if and when they get back to us.

Source: Reddit, Google Issue Tracker, Ars Technica