The assumption stems from the facts that a/ it started as personal use, like gmail. Only way later workspace and that the gsuite name even came out. Certainly no enterprise offering for years after personal use was broadly well adopted. b/ contrary to most SaaS businesses, Google is rather subtle and gentle when it comes to promoting or upselling, many people don't even know a paid/pro version of this thing exists.
But you are right, google offers enterprise grade solutions so is expected to support over a few million files per account or even per user. Maybe something changed due to hasty cost cutting measures given the sudden interest by many on the issue tracker.
> The assumption stems from the facts that a/ it started as personal use, like gmail. Only way later workspace and that the gsuite name even came out. Certainly no enterprise offering for years after personal use was broadly well adopted.
Yes - I mean, sort of. It depends on what you define as the starting point for Google Drive. Like many Google products, the brand has been reorganized and reused a number of times.
If you look at Google Drive as an extension of Google Docs, which existed prior to 2012, then yes, it started off as personal use. But if you look at it as a thing that launched in 2012 (the introduction of the Google Drive brand), then it arguably belongs as part of the reorganization that involved ending G Suite and turning it into Google Apps for Work[0], which is now known as Google Workspace.
In fact, now that the consumer version of Google Drive has been reorganized into Google One, you could argue that the enterprise version of Google Drive is actually older than the consumer version!
Of course, all of these distinctions are somewhat arbitrary, because it's the same product that you've used all along, and the only thing that changes is the pricing and the marketing. But if we're talking about consumer vs. enterprise versions of a commodity product that essentially operates at enterprise-scale for consumers, that's also the only real difference.
It's actually quite funny that the same product (which has been improved slightly, but is largely identical to what it was over a decade ago) has had so many different brands attached to it, especially when you consider that some of those brands are essentially container formats that repackage the same underlying brand (e.g., Google Workspace contains Google Drive).
[0] There was actually a rebrand in between, from 2012-2015, but because Google's product names are Alphabet soup, I can't be sure of what they called it in the interim, though I'm positive it was a distinct product from before 2012.
But you are right, google offers enterprise grade solutions so is expected to support over a few million files per account or even per user. Maybe something changed due to hasty cost cutting measures given the sudden interest by many on the issue tracker.