Google confirmed that it has silently instituted a 5 million file limit in Drive, even for those who pay for extra storage.

The new file limit is “a safeguard to prevent misuse of our system in a way that might impact the stability and safety of the system,” Google told Ars Technica, which had assumed that the new file limit was just a bug. “[The limit applies to] how many items one user can create in any Drive,” meaning that it is per user, not per organization. “This limit does not impact the vast majority of our users’ ability to use their Google storage. In practice, the number of impacted users here is vanishingly small.”

Vanishingly? Hm.

Anyhoo, users have run into this limitation, which is why the question came up in the first place. A user on Reddit noted that he woke up to a message from Google Drive telling him that he needed to delete 2 million of his 7 million files to meet the requirement. Other users have experienced a situation in which they can no longer upload files to Drive, with no explanation that they’re hit some previously unknown limit.

“Error 403: This account has exceeded the creation limit of 5 million items,” the error message explains. “To create more items, move items to the trash and delete them forever.”

This is a healthy reminder that Microsoft isn’t the only company that has a hard time communicating effectively. As of this writing, Google’s documentation for Drive still doesn’t mention this limit.