Google appears to have already stepped back from introducing a file limit to its online cloud storage platform.
Earlier this week, reports began to surface from Google Drive users across the globe that they had encountered new notifications about a seemingly newly-introduced account limit of five million files.
However, Google Drive has now officially responded to the reports, revealing that it will not be introducing a limit after all, and reassuring users that their files are safe.
There’s no limit
“We recently rolled out a system update to Drive item limits to preserve stability and optimize performance,” the company’s official Twitter account said (opens in new tab). “While this impacted only a small number of people, we are rolling back this change as we explore alternate approaches to ensure a great experience for all.”
“If we need to make changes, we will communicate them to users in advance.”
The move was met with some alarm by Google Drive customers, who received no warning of the change, suggesting it may have been a mistake on the company’s part.
The wording of the warning notification certainly didn’t reassure users, who were confronted with a message reading, “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.”
One Reddit user was even given a notification telling them to, “Please delete 2 million files to continue using your Google Drive account.”
As we noted in our original story, five million files is a pretty big allowance in real terms. For users on Google Drive’s 2TB offering – the highest personal plan available – the average file size across an account would have to be 400 kilobytes (KB).
That being said, there are certainly some instances where users may have that many files, for instance in the storage of large amounts of record data – but for the vast majority, users shouldn’t hit their limit, whatever Google decides that will be.
