TECHNOLOGY
How much Drive space does Google have? Could it run out?
Tia Gibbons
■ Google has 22 data centres around the world, each an enormous warehouse full of computers. In 2011, Randall Munroe, creator of the comic xkcd, estimated that Google had 10 billion terabytes of space on computers called servers, and another 5 billion terabytes stored on magnetic tape. One person’s Google Drive account is 15 gigabytes. Each terabyte can therefore contain 266 people’s Drive accounts. 15 billion terabytes can hold 3.99 billion Drive accounts. That’s compared to 7.8 billion people alive today. Since 2011 Google’s storage has grown further, and can do so until we run out of materials to make computers.