Google Drive can hold very large files — up to 5 TB each, according to Google's own help page — so size is rarely the limit when you share from it. The limits that bite are different: shared links do not expire by default, you cannot see who downloaded a file, and the recipient is dropped into Google's interface rather than a clean download. For storing and editing, Drive is excellent. For sending, those three gaps are worth knowing about.
I run Yungle, which is a sending tool, so weigh my view accordingly. The facts about Drive below come from Google's own documentation, checked on 21 September 2026.
What Drive is built for
Drive is a storage and collaboration product. It keeps your files, syncs them between devices, and lets several people edit the same document. That is a different job from handing a finished file to someone outside your organisation — and most of the friction people feel comes from using one tool for the other.
The limits that matter when sending
Links that live forever. A Drive link shared with "anyone with the link" stays valid until you change the sharing setting. That is convenient for a team folder and risky for a client delivery: links get forwarded, pasted into chats and found in old emails years later. Nothing cleans them up for you.
No receipt. Drive does not tell you when someone downloaded a shared file. For a delivery, "did they get it?" is often the one question you need answered, and you end up asking by email.
The recipient's experience. Your client lands in Drive's own interface rather than on a page that is about your files. For a paid deliverable, that matters more than it sounds.
Where the data goes. Google is a US company, Google LLC in California, and its privacy policy says data may be processed on servers around the world. For some clients that is a non-issue; for others — particularly in Europe — it is the first question they ask.
When Drive is the right tool
It would be dishonest to pretend otherwise: for a lot of sharing, Drive is fine.
- Your whole team and client already work in Google Workspace.
- The file is a living document that people will edit together.
- You need to keep terabytes of material and share bits of it internally.
In those cases, keep using it. The problems above appear specifically when you send finished files to people outside your organisation.
A better pattern for deliveries
Separate storage from sending. Keep working files wherever you keep them, and send deliveries through something built for handing files over:
- The recipient gets a link to a page that is about the files, not about a platform.
- The link expires on a date you choose, so forwarded copies die on schedule.
- You get a receipt when it is downloaded.
- The upload survives the connection dropping, because big deliveries take a while.
That is what a transfer on Yungle does, from servers in Germany: up to 10 GB without an account, a receipt per recipient, and an expiry you control. For work clients come back to over months, a collection keeps the link alive as long as you want it to.
If you are moving away from Google
If the driver is where your data lives rather than convenience, sending is only one piece. The US CLOUD Act and your files explains why the company's nationality matters, not just the server's location, and the European alternative page covers what moving looks like in practice.
The short version
- Drive's size limit is generous; its sending habits are the problem.
- Links do not expire and there are no download receipts.
- Keep Drive for storage and collaboration; send deliveries through a tool built for it.
The full, sourced side-by-side is on the Google Drive comparison, and the head-to-head with a transfer service is in WeTransfer vs Google Drive.