What it actually is, and the three companies that run it.
2 · Your Google
pages 6–17
Which account you are in, and why it keeps filling up. Most of our time here.
3 · Lost phone
pages 18–21
What you would lose — and what to set up before it happens.
4 · Workspace
pages 22–25
What the club has, and why it is not a Gmail account.
Stop me whenever. You can ask anything twice.
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Part one
What is "the cloud"?
It's somebody else's computer, in a big shed, that you rent a corner of.
Your photos aren't floating in the sky. They're on a machine in a building like this one, and you reach them over the internet.
Which is why it works on your phone and your iPad. Same corner, two windows.
They use a lot of power
These buildings take about 1.5% of the world's electricity — and on present course that doubles by 2030.
And a lot of water
Mostly for cooling. Data centres in the United States alone got through about 64 billion litres of it in 2023.
So they are argued about
Councils and whole towns now fight over whether to allow one. Your students will have seen it in the news.
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Part one
Three companies run most of it
Amazon
The biggest, and the one you never see — a great deal of the internet runs on its sheds. You meet it as Amazon Photos, Alexa, Prime Video and Kindle.
Microsoft
OneDrive, Outlook and Hotmail, Word and Excel, Teams, Xbox. Turns up on a Windows computer whether you asked for it or not.
Google
Gmail, Drive, Photos, Docs, Calendar, YouTube, Maps — and Android itself. One address opens all of them.
Between them these three run 68% of the world's cloud — Amazon 30%, Microsoft 25%, Google 13% (early 2026). Apple is the fourth one in your pocket; not the same business, but iCloud sits beside these for anybody with an iPhone.
The club runs on Google, so that is where we will spend the hour. If you use Apple or Microsoft at home and want a session on yours, say so and I will do it.
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Part one
You're already using two of them
An iPhone or iPad? You're using iCloud. It was switched on the day you set it up.
An Android phone, or a Gmail address? You're using Google. Android is Google, and that one address opens all three parts.
Both? Then your photos are in one place and your email is in another, and nobody ever explained that.
Nobody chose this. It arrived with the device.
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Part two · how to actually do it
Your Google account is three things
Gmail is your email. Drive is your files. Photos is your pictures. One address, one password, three rooms.
1 · Find the nine dots. Top right, just left of your circle. On the phone they are in the Google app.
2 · Tap them. A panel of squares opens — Gmail, Drive, Photos, and everything else Google gives you.
3 · Pick the room. No signing in again. You are already there.
Or type it straight in: mail.google.com · drive.google.com · photos.google.com
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Part two · first, a question
How many email addresses do you have?
Have a think. One? Two? An old bigpond or optusnet one you can't get rid of, and a Gmail somebody set up for you?
Hold that number for one moment — it explains half of what goes wrong, and the next page shows you how.
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Part two · the big one
Which account am I in?
That number you just gave me — here is what it costs you.
This is behind more confusion than anything else we get asked about.
You have a Gmail address, and an old one from your internet company.
Somewhere along the way, a second Gmail got made. Nobody remembers when.
Now the phone is signed into one and the iPad into the other — and things "disappear".
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Part two
How to tell, in two seconds
Top right of the screen, there's a circle — your photo, or a letter.
Tap it. It tells you which account you are in, right now.
Tap the circle. Read the address.
And to switch: same circle, then “Add another account”, or pick the one you want from the list. Nothing is lost — both keep existing.
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Part two · how to actually do it
"They shared it with me and I can't open it"
1 · Read the small line under the heading — middle of the page, not the top. It says “You are signed in as…”. Write it down.
2 · Now go back to the email the link came in. Which of your addresses was it sent to? That is the one with access.
3 · They will be different. That is the whole problem. Tap “Switch account” and pick the address from step 2. Not in the list? Add another account and sign in.
4 · Open the link again from the email itself — not from your history, which will take you back to the wrong one.
Never press “Request access”. It emails whoever sent it and waits for a reply — for a document you can already open.
On a phone the Gmail app and the browser can be signed into different accounts. Same problem, same fix.
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Part two · take this away
Write down every address you have
For the student who says "things keep disappearing" or "I never got that email". You cannot fix an account muddle nobody has ever written down.
On paper. What each one is, and what it's for.
The old one from your internet company — bills, and anything set up years ago.
The Gmail you actually read.
The other Gmail, that things keep going to.
Do this with a student and half their trouble disappears in ten minutes.
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Part two · take this away
"I’ve ended up with two email addresses" — now what?
Keep both, sign into both
Circle → Add another account. Then the circle switches between them, on the phone and the computer. Nothing is lost and nothing is merged. Right when both are genuinely in use.
Or pick one, and forward the other
In the old account: Settings → Forwarding. The old address keeps working for anyone who has it, and everything lands in the one inbox you actually read. This is what most people want.
Do not just delete the old one
Deleting a Google account takes its Drive and its Photos with it, and anything ever shared to that address stops opening. It is not tidying up. It is a bonfire.
The forwarding one, step by step — on a computer, in the account you want to leave behind:
You do not have to tidy it up. You have to know which is which, and make one of them the one you check.
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Part two
"Your storage is full"
Everyone gets this message eventually. Here's what it means.
Google gives you 15 gigabytes free — and that is shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos together.
It's nearly always the photos. Thousands of them, at full size, going back years.
Second worst: old emails with big attachments nobody ever deleted.
The world takes 5.3 billion photos a day — about 61,000 every second. Google Photos alone now holds over 9 trillion photos and videos. No wonder yours is full.
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Part two · how to actually do it
What to do about it
1 · Open your storage page. You are almost certainly on a phone, so:
iPhone or iPad — the Google One app. Not there? Open Drive, tap the three lines top left, then Storage.Android — the Google One app. It came with the phone.Computer — one.google.com/storage
2 · Read the bar. It splits 15 GB between Photos, Gmail and Drive. It is nearly always Photos.
3 · Tap “Free up space”. Biggest files first — usually a surprise.
4 · Delete, then empty the bin. Deleted is not gone for 30 days.
There are THREE bins — Photos, Drive and Gmail each keep their own. Empty one and the space may not move.
Or pay a little: about $2.49 a month for 100 GB — for a lot of people that is the honest answer.
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Part two · Brian Mackie's question
Why it keeps nagging you
You are not doing anything wrong. The free allowance is just small — and that message is the company asking you to pay.
Dropbox · 2 GB
The smallest, and unchanged for years. Five hundred photos and it is full.
OneDrive · 5 GB
On Windows it often holds your Desktop — so it fills on its own.
iCloud · 5 GB
One backup of one iPhone can be more than that by itself.
Google · 15 GB
Three times the others — but shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos.
So where do you actually look? On the phone in their hand:
Not Settings → Storage. That is the phone's own storage — a different number, and a different problem.
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Part two · and what to do about it
Getting off one you're paying for
Get the copy out first. Stop paying last.
1 · Look first. Open it and see what is actually in there. Don't assume it is a spare copy of something.
2 · Get a copy out.Tick the top box, then Download. Dropbox, OneDrive and Drive all work exactly like this. It arrives as one zip file — double-click it to open.
3 · Check what you copied. Open a few of the photos. A folder with the right name on it proves nothing.
4 · Then stop paying. Cancel last. What happens to files left behind differs between companies.
Photos and Gmail don't tick-and-download — use takeout.google.com, then Create export. It emails you a link, and it can take hours.iCloud — privacy.apple.com, then Get a copy of your data.
Cancel where you signed up. If it was bought inside an iPhone app, deleting the app changes nothing — it is Settings → your name → Subscriptions, and nowhere else.
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Part two · and this is the bit nobody tells you
Where should it go? What I would tell you
If you just want it off Dropbox
An external drive. Cheapest, done in an afternoon. But it is one copy in one place, usually sitting beside the computer it is meant to protect.
If you want it back, and no monthly fee
A Synology BeeStation. About $489 for 4TB, bought once. Its own photos app and files, reachable from your phone. This is the one I use, and the one I would recommend.
If you would rather not think about it
Pick one cloud and pay properly. Stop paying two, and let somebody else keep the machine running and backed up. For a lot of people that is the honest answer.
Whichever you choose: one copy is not a backup. My BeeStation is a single disk, so I pay a little more for it to back itself up somewhere else. Ask your students where their second copy is.
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Part three
If I lost my phone tomorrow, what would I lose?
The question every student asks sooner or later, usually after it's happened to a friend.
The honest answer: almost nothing — if three things are set up. Quite a lot if they aren't.
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Part three · BEFORE it happens · on an iPhone or iPad
How your Apple account should be set up
1 · Settings, then your name at the top, then Sign-In & Security. Or appleid.apple.com on a computer.
2 · Check your trusted phone number is one you still use. An out-of-date number here is the single commonest reason people are locked out of an Apple account.
3 · Add a second trusted number — a partner's, or a landline. Tap Add a Trusted Phone Number.
4 · Set a Recovery Contact. Somebody you trust who can give you a code to get back in. Apple has no help desk that can do this for you.
And check Find My iPhone is On while you are in there. It is what makes a lost phone findable at all.
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Part three · BEFORE it happens · on Google
How your Google account should be set up
1 · Go to myaccount.google.com. Or tap your circle, then “Manage your Google Account”.
2 · Choose Security, then find “How you sign in to Google”.
3 · Check two rows.Recovery phone and recovery email — a second way back in. Tap either to add one.
4 · Turn on 2-Step Verification, same page. A code to your phone as well as your password — the single biggest thing that stops somebody else getting in.
5 · And lock the phone itself — a code, a fingerprint or your face. That one is in the phone's own Settings, not here.
Fifteen minutes, once. The club has asked everyone to turn on 2-Step — if you have not, this is the page. Without these, a locked account can be gone for good.
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Part three · WHEN it happens
The first hour, in the right order
1 · Find it
iPhone: the Find My app, or icloud.com/find on any computer. Android: Find Hub — the app Google used to call Find My Device — or google.com/android/find. You can make it ring, even on silent.
2 · Mark it as lost
Locks it, puts your message and a phone number on the screen, and suspends the cards in its wallet. It keeps tracking — so an honest finder can ring you.
3 · Ring your phone company
Block the SIM so nobody can use your number. People forget this one — and your number is often how you get back into everything else.
4 · Erase it — last
Only when you are sure it is gone for good. Erasing cannot be undone, and it stops you finding it. Apple say so themselves.
And the trap: if the recovery number on your account IS the phone you just lost, you cannot get back in. Which is exactly why the two pages before this one matter.
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Part four
So what is a "Workspace"? Three ways to have one
A plain Gmail account
Free, and it is yours personally. The address ends @gmail.com, and nobody else can ever be given control of it. Fine for you. Wrong for a club.
Workspace for Nonprofits
Free for a registered charity. Your own domain, 100TB shared, and an admin who can hand an account to somebody else. This is what the club has.
Workspace, paid
The same thing, per person per month, for businesses. This is what I have for my own work — and I pay for it.
The club is a registered charity with the ACNC, so Google gives it the business product for nothing. Not a discount. Free. That is why our email says @compalsnb.org.au and not @gmail.com.
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Part four
And this is everything that comes with it
Writing and sums
Docs · Sheets · Slides · Forms · Sites Word, Excel and PowerPoint, free, and two people can type in the same one at once.
Talking
Gmail · Meet · Chat · Groups Video calls, and a group address like training@ that reaches whoever holds the job today.
Keeping things
Drive · Shared drives · Calendar · Keep A shared drive belongs to the club, not to a person — that is the whole difference.
And the boring one
The admin console Make an account, close an account, see who did what. It is the bit that means the club can carry on without any one person.
You do not have to use all of it. But it is all there, it is already paid for, and nobody has to ask.
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Part four
Why that matters to a club
Without one
The roster lives in the trainer's inbox. The lists live on somebody's laptop. When they step down, it all goes with them.
With one
The roster, the lists and the meeting notes belong to the club. The next person opens them on their first day.
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Part four
What ours holds
Shared drives for the committee, for training, for bookings, for family history.
The rosters, the trainers' lists, the keyholders, the meeting notes.
Thirty-one years of the club, in one place, owned by the club.
You don't need an account to understand it — but it's worth knowing it exists, and that it isn't in anyone's inbox.
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If you take one thing
Tap the circle. Read the address.
Which account am I in? Answer that first, and most of the mystery goes with it.
It works for you, and it works for whoever you're sitting beside on a Tuesday morning.
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Over to you
What didn't this answer?
That is the useful question — and now is the moment you can answer it. One line is plenty.
Trainers: email me at web@compalsnb.org.au Everyone else: the Ask Us page at compalsnb.org.au
