[cheepin]

Here's why: https://bconnected.berkeley.edu/projects/google-cost-reducti...

TLDR: Google Workspace for Education rug pulled schools on their "unlimited" plans, and the deadline is coming up to avoid paying extra fees. This was communicated in advance, but maybe still a bit quick for a large institution

[fn-mote]

This is it 100%.

> From: (Jan 2023) We currently store 12.4 PB of data across all Google services, and our new storage cap, without significant additional fees, is 1.9 PB.

See the timeline [1]. They have been forcing the rest of the university to reduce their usage. Finally it's time for alumni. There's no need for a fuss on HN about this. There's a lot more belt tightening across the university.

I'm not seeing the legitimate use for 5GB of email. Delete your attachments and it has to be fine. Annoying? Sure, but you can search email for large attachments. How bad could it be. I'm sure they follow a power law, so deleting a few of them should do it for "legitimate" over-quota users.

[1]: https://bconnected.berkeley.edu/projects/google-cost-reducti...

[AnthonyMouse]

The cost of 12,400TB of storage is on the order of $100,000. UC Berkeley has an annual budget of over $3,000,000,000, i.e. this is 0.003% of their annual budget. Also, it's Berkeley, they probably have that kind of hardware sitting around. They should just stop using Google services.