What's happening?

Recent significant changes in costs from Google to its licensing storage have forced Brown to place limits on Google Workspace storage services for the entire Brown community including alumni. We are committed to maintaining this service for our alumni and will continue to honor lifetime email, but we will no longer be able to offer unlimited email and drive storage in our @alumni.brown.edu accounts. 

As a result of extensive analysis and conversations with advisory groups, Brown’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) will be implementing a 15GB file storage quota on all alumni accounts, effective on March 4, 2024. This quota matches the free consumer service from Google, will allow you to continue to identify yourself as a member of the Brown Alumni community, and is similar to or better than alumni email services offered by most of our university peers.

We are aware that many alumni have been using their Alumni Google accounts with unlimited quotas in ways that have allowed them to store more information than the default consumer quota. If you are in this situation, you will need to move your data to an alternative service or personal account to get to a 15GB quota. If your storage is not under the quota by March 4, 2024, your account will be locked, you will be unable to access your data, and you will need to contact the Brown OIT to reopen it. Any accounts with more than 15GB of mail, files, photos, and other data will be purged of all content starting on June 1, 2024.

FAQs

How do I know if I'm impacted?

• While signed into your Brown Gmail account, go to this link to see your utilization.

How is my storage calculated?

• Your storage usage is the total size of all of your email, Google Drive documents, and Google Photos.
• Documents or Photos that have been shared with you will not count towards your storage.
• You can go to the Storage section of your Google Drive to see a breakdown of what's using your storage.
• Although emails typically don't use a lot of space, emails with images or attachments can add up quickly.

How can I clean up space?

• You can review this Google Article on how to find and remove data from your account: Manage files in your Google Drive storage

Will my email stop working?

• No, your email will not stop working even if you've hit your limit. However, you will no longer be able to make or modify any Google Drive content until you have reduced your storage usage below the quota.

Can I pay for more storage directly?

• Unfortunately, Google does not provide a process to allow for the individual resale of Google Workspace storage, so Brown is unable to offer a method to pay directly for a larger personal quota on your @alumni.brown.edu account. 

Can I move my data to another service/account?

• Yes. There are many commercial services available to store your data, and we have a dedicated support article to help you learn how to migrate your data to an alternative service.

What happens if I'm still over the limit by the cut-off date?

• A majority of accounts will be unaffected by this change but those who are above the limit will be communicated to directly.

How do I clean up Google Drive?

• To reduce your current utilization, you can refer to this article that has some tips on how to clean up your Drive to reduce your footprint.

How do I consolidate my alumni and personal accounts?

• If you use a personal Gmail account, you can set up your alumni account so that you can send and receive emails in one place without the need to switch accounts. Please check out this article.

How can I get additional help?

• Contact google-storage-help@brown.edu for any questions regarding Google Storage.

How can I change the owner of my files?

• You can refer to this KB article to change ownership of the Google Drive data to someone else at brown: 
  • Transferring Google Drive files between accounts