Google Drive for Education Now Offers Unlimited Space

Was your school locker ever big enough for all your stuff?

Today’s students live out much of their academic lives online, so it only makes sense they’d have a digital locker for all their work. But how much space is appropriate for students?

According to Google, an unlimited amount.

Students at schools that use Google Apps for Education soon will have unlimited storage space on an upgraded Google Drive, the company announced Sept. 30. Previously, students only had access to 30 gigabytes of storage space. Now, they’ll be able to store single files that are as large as 5 terabytes.

A Google post touts its Drive for Education upgrade as "an infinitely large, ultra-secure and entirely free bookbag for the 21st century." The upgraded service is similar to Google Drive for Work, which has a monthly pricing model.

The launch comes amid a cloud storage competition among Google, Amazon, Dropbox, Microsoft and Apple. Each service is vying for customers to buy into its ecosystem, according to Forbes. Providing a free service to students now could mean business for Google down the line when they graduate and want to bring their files with them outside their school’s free service.

The upgrade to Drive is being conducted on a rolling basis, with a complete rollout “in the coming weeks,” according to Google.