I’ve been hosting email template assets on Google Drive using publicly accessible shared files. The sharing is set to “Anyone with the link can view” and I generate download URLs through the API that follow this pattern: docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id={file_identifier}.
Most of the time this setup works perfectly fine. However, I occasionally receive complaints from users who can’t load these images properly. I suspect Google might be imposing some kind of rate limiting or bandwidth restrictions on these public file requests.
Does anyone have concrete information about Google Drive’s usage quotas for shared files? I’m particularly interested in any official documentation that explains these limitations. Any insights would be really helpful.
Yeah, Google Drive’s throttling is def weird. Gets worse during peak hours - like afternoon US time. The API quotas are separate from sharing limits, which is confusing. Try using direct download links instead of API-generated ones. They often work better when throttled.
Google Drive has hidden throttling that kicks in when files get hammered with traffic. I’ve been running a similar setup for two years - problems start around 100-200 concurrent requests to the same file. The throttling seems tied to IP clustering and file popularity, not just per-user limits. What’s really annoying is Google’s docs are deliberately vague about this stuff. They obviously want you paying for Google Cloud instead. I worked around it by rotating multiple copies of the same file with different IDs to spread the load. Total pain for maintenance though. Eventually just switched to S3 with CloudFront and haven’t looked back.
I’ve encountered similar issues with Google Drive as your user base expands. Loading times can become problematic due to unsolicited throttling on popular files. While Google doesn’t explicitly outline these limits, it seems the restrictions are more prevalent when multiple users access files simultaneously. To alleviate this, we implemented a Cloudflare CDN in front of our images, significantly reducing the direct requests to Google Drive. If you anticipate continued traffic growth, consider migrating to Google Cloud Storage with a CDN for improved performance and reliability.