Google has announced a new storage policy for all institutions using Google Workspace for Education editions which will take effect in July 2022.  This means the unlimited storage offered to qualifying schools and universities for free by Google will come to an end.

After considering the possible alternatives and the associated cost implication arising from Google’s policy change, Information Technology Services (ITS) has decided to migrate all HKU Connect accounts from Google to Microsoft.  Below tabulates the difference between the current account arrangement on Google and after migration to Microsoft:

	Current Arrangement (Google account)	After Migration (Microsoft account)
Platform	Google	Microsoft
Email address (no change)	@connect.hku.hk	@connect.hku.hk
Login credentials (no change)	Graduate email account user name and password	Graduate email account user name and password
Expiry date	Till the account migration date	Nil
Storage solutions	Google Drive and Google Photos	OneDrive
Total storage size (email, files and photos)	1 TB after end of 2021 till the account migration date	5 TB
Option for users to pay for additional storage	No	No

The tentative account migration date is around June or July 2022.  We will set up all user accounts on Microsoft and users will migrate the contents from their Google accounts to the Microsoft or other accounts, if necessary.

After the migration date,

1. The Google accounts will be kept accessible for a 12-month period for users to migrate their emails and files to the Microsoft or other accounts.  During this period, the Google accounts will have no email sending, email receiving and file sharing functions.
2. New emails will go to the Microsoft accounts and users can start using them for sending emails from their HKU email address @connect.hku.hk.

Graduates will be invited to do a simple one-time registration to activate their Microsoft accounts before account migration.  More details, including the confirmed migration date, account registration and data migration procedures will be sent to you around April or May 2022.

If your Google account is having a total storage (including emails, files and photos) exceeding 1 TB, please remove some files/emails and keep the storage size within 1 TB by end of 2021.  This is to ensure you can continue accessing your Google account after a quota limit will be imposed by Google in early 2022.   You can click here to see the ways on reducing the size of your Google storage.

In case you have questions on the above, please contact our Service Desk at 3917 0123 or ithelp@hku.hk.

Regards

KC Chang
Systems Services
Information Technology Services