Lesson 2: Choosing Your Google Account and Plan

Why the plan comes first

In Microsoft 365 you probably never chose a plan. IT gave you a work account, or you bought Microsoft 365 Personal or Family for home. Before you move anything to Google, decide which kind of Google account will hold your work. That choice sets your storage, your email address, your meeting limits and who controls the account. This lesson helps you choose and record that choice. It does not move any data yet.

The three Google options, mapped to Microsoft

Google offers three routes. Each one lines up roughly with a Microsoft route you already know.

Where the match breaks:

• Pooled storage compared with per-person storage. Google Workspace business storage is pooled: every user's allowance goes into one shared total for the organisation. Microsoft 365 Family gives each of up to six people their own 1 TB, and that storage cannot be pooled. One heavy user affects the two systems differently.
• Workspace Individual is not a small Business plan. It is built for one person on a personal Gmail address. You cannot use your own domain with it, and you cannot add colleagues. If you want you@yourcompany.com, you need a Business plan.
• Business plans have a 300-user cap on both sides. Google sells Business Starter, Standard and Plus for up to 300 users. Microsoft's Business plans have the same cap. Larger organisations buy Enterprise plans from either vendor.
• Meeting sizes differ by tier. Google's pricing page lists Meet limits of 100 participants (Starter), 150 (Standard), 500 (Plus) and 1,000 (Enterprise). Compare these with the Teams meeting limits on your current plan.

Task 1: Find your current Microsoft 365 plan

Do this before you look at Google.

1. Sign in at microsoft365.com, open your profile picture and select View account. Then open Subscriptions (for a personal account) or My account (for a work account).
2. Write down the exact plan name, for example "Microsoft 365 Business Standard" or "Microsoft 365 Family".
3. Open OneDrive and note how much storage you use and your total allowance.
4. In Outlook on the web, open Settings to check your mailbox size.
5. List the features you actually use each week, such as desktop Office apps, Teams meetings of a certain size, shared mailboxes or Bookings.

If you use a work account, you probably cannot change its plan, and you may not see all the details. That is a sign IT owns the account. See Task 4.

Task 2: Compare against Google's current pages

Plans, names and limits change without warning. Treat any table, including the one above, as a starting point, not as fact.

1. Open Google's Workspace pricing page (workspace.google.com/pricing) and the Workspace Individual help pages.
2. Open Microsoft's own plan comparison page for your plan type (business or home).
3. For each option you are considering, check:
   • storage per user, and whether it is pooled
   • email address type (@gmail.com or your own domain)
   • maximum users
   • meeting participant limit
   • which AI features are included (Gemini on Google, Copilot on Microsoft)
4. Check prices in your own currency and region. Prices vary by country and promotion, so this course does not quote them.

Task 3: Keep a dated plan record

A note that has no date on it becomes misleading within months. Create a short document called Plan check and add one row per option:

• Vendor and exact plan name
• Storage and email limits
• Key feature limits (users, meeting size, AI features)
• URL of the page you read
• Date checked, for example "2 November 2026"

Recheck this record before you buy and again at your day-30 review. If a figure has changed, update the row and the date. Do not overwrite old rows silently.

Task 4: Decide who runs the move

The plan you chose tells you who is in charge of the move.

You can run it yourself when:

• you are moving your own personal Microsoft account to a personal Google account or Workspace Individual
• you run a small team, you own the domain, and you are the admin for both the Microsoft and Google accounts

IT must run it when:

• the account belongs to your employer's Microsoft 365 tenant
• the move involves the company domain's email routing (DNS and MX records)
• other people's mailboxes, shared drives or SharePoint sites have to move
• retention, legal hold or compliance rules apply to the data

A company tenant move happens in both vendors' admin consoles and affects everyone at the same time. If you copy work data into a personal Google account yourself, you may break company policy. Ask IT for the plan and timeline. Your job is to get your own habits ready.

Key takeaways

• Map your Microsoft plan to one of three Google routes: a free personal account, Workspace Individual, or a Workspace Business or Enterprise plan.
• Workspace Individual keeps your @gmail.com address. It does not support a custom domain, and it is for one person only.
• Workspace business storage is pooled across the organisation. Microsoft Family storage is fixed at 1 TB per person.
• Check both vendors' current pages yourself, and record each plan, limit, URL and date checked.
• You can move a personal account or a small team that you administer yourself. A company tenant move is run by IT.