Diagnose a 15% monthly jump in storage used by Google Docs, Sheets and Slides

You are the product manager for Google Workspace's document editors: Docs, Sheets and Slides. Looking at the monthly numbers, you see that storage usage is up 15% compared with the previous month, a sharp jump. Walk through what you would do. ```hint Good news or bad news Before looking for a culprit, decide what this number measures, what its normal monthly growth looks like, and whether more storage would mean more usage, a cost or quota problem, or a change in how the number is counted. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the 15% measured in total bytes stored, or in storage per active user or per file, and what does a normal month look like for this metric? - Does the metric include only native Docs, Sheets and Slides files, or also embedded images, converted uploads and version history? - Is the jump in consumer accounts, paying business and education customers, or both? - Why is it being raised: storage cost for Google, users and customers hitting their storage limits, or simply an unexplained anomaly? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Validating the number first: the metric definition, logging or pipeline changes, migrations or backfills, and seasonality. - Breaking storage into its drivers (accounts, files per account, size per file including versions and embedded media) and segmenting by product, customer type, region, platform and how files are created. - Checking causes in a sensible order: Google's own launches and policy changes, seasonal or external events, and abuse or bugs. - Deciding whether the growth is healthy or harmful, and what to do in each case, covering cost, quotas and user experience. - Communicating the findings and adding monitoring so a repeat is caught early. ### Follow-up Questions - Most of the growth comes from a small number of accounts creating huge numbers of file copies through the API. What now? - The growth is genuine usage, but storage cost is rising faster than revenue. What levers would you consider? - How would you set up an alert that catches a spike like this within days rather than at month end?