Sell your company's Google Drive files to AI

A company’s Drive is its specs, proposals, spreadsheets, decks, CAD files and the comment threads on them, with years of version history. Seven of the companies we list take company drives, more than any other kind of record, and Telegraph names Google Drive first among them.

Google’s terms let you license what’s in it

Google’s terms say the customer keeps all intellectual property rights in Customer Data, and its Workspace service terms say Google won’t use Customer Data to train or fine-tune its generative AI models without the customer’s permission. Neither clause stops you licensing a copy of your own files to someone else.

Export the whole domain with Data Export, shared drives included

Google’s Data Export tool in the Admin console copies every user’s Drive, Gmail, Chat and Calendar, shared drives included, to a Cloud Storage bucket, and it’s available in all Workspace editions. You need a super admin account at least 30 days old with 2-Step Verification on, and an active subscription. The export is ready no earlier than 48 hours after it starts, usually takes 72 hours and can take up to 14 days. Files in Google’s default bucket are deleted 60 days after the export starts, so download them before then.

Individual users can download their own Drive through Google Takeout if an admin allows it. That covers one person’s files, not the company’s.

The clocks that run out

• A deleted user’s Drive can be restored for 20 days, then it’s gone. Offboarding staff by deleting their accounts starts that clock on each one.
• After you cancel the subscription, Google says your users’ Workspace data will be deleted and can’t be restored, and the Data Export tool excludes core-service data once the subscription is canceled or suspended. Google’s data processing terms give a recovery period of up to 30 days and deletion within a further 180.
• Meeting recordings and transcripts land in Drive too, in the organizer’s “Google Meet” folder. See meeting recordings.

Run the export while the subscription is live, then cancel.

What to take out

• HR folders, contracts and legal advice. Personnel files, signed agreements with confidentiality terms and anything from your lawyers.
• Client deliverables. Work you made for a client may not be yours to license.
• Personal shares. Files staff kept in Drive that aren’t company work.

Ask each company how it removes names and personal details before you share a sample.