In August, Google packed its Apps program off to school with Classroom, a tool to help teachers organize their day. Now, with a version of Google Drive for educators, teachers don’t have to worry about storing files online, either.
Google Apps for Education is available to customers at no charge, the company said.
In June, Google announced Drive for Work, a move that upended the existing cloud storage market. Businesses who use Google Apps can now store an unlimited amount of storage within Google’s cloud storage, with file sizes of up to 5TB. The same constraints now hold true for those who subscribe to Google Apps for Education, Google said.
That’s great news for students, who will undoubtedly test the limits of Google’s online storage and stash just about everything online. Be careful, though, if you’re considering tucking a pirated movie in there—Google can sniff your files at its discretion.
On the other hand, Google claims that every file stored on Drive, both in transit and on the servers, is encrypted. Google won’t share the contents of your data without being asked, but the company will comply with legal requests and/or court orders.
Why this matters: Apps for Education ropes students into the Google ecosystem while they’re still young and impressionable. Who knows, it could create grassroots impetus to convert the whole campus to Google. Archrival Microsoft’s doing much the same thing, most recently with its self-serve licenses for students on campuses committed to Office.
Even if students just end up storing a bunch of music online, chances are that it will total up to just a few gigabytes. The real test will be what happens to those adventurous enough to store something illegal there.