Google Bringing Changes to Google Drive Links and Unlisted Videos on YouTube as a Part of an Update rolling out on in the coming months

Google as a part of its update is bringing some new changes to its application this coming September to make Drive and YouTube more secured platforms for its users.

According to the tech giant, the company will be adding a resource key to generated links on its platform. While this was not an issue before and users could easy access linked files without any resourced key, this is not the case now. As part of the update, which is rolling out on September 13th, Google Drive users will need a resource key to open any link that is generated for sharing through Google Drive.

However, what about all those links which were easily accessible previously?

Well, according to Google, links that have already been opened or accessed before will work just the same, without any need of a resource key, but this new update will surely work for all the new unopened links or those links that are to come on the platform.

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Working offices will be given a due date till July 23rd in which they are supposed to decide that how their company will be accepting this new update, where they can choose between two option, that is whether they want this new link update with limitations or completely opt out of it.

Apart from workplace users, personal users’ will get to decide the same stance from July 26th onwards till September 13th.

However, none of these two will be given an option to deny the update, because the change in the new update is a necessary part for the tech giant to grow, according to Google.

Apart from this, some related changes are being brought on YouTube as well. YouTube, four years ago, back in 2017, made some security changes to its platform where it made it harder for users, to uncover unlisted videos. Those who already had a link to all those videos deemed unlisted or had it saved were only able to access it, while it was not available in the search results.

However, now YouTube is taking another step in its security changes and is making all these unlisted videos, private. What needs to be made sure is that all videos uploaded before January 1st, 2017, and unlisted will be deemed as private now.



According to YouTube, anyone’s whose uploaded unlisted video will be going into the private pile will be notified about it before hand.

Similar to Google Drive links, YouTube users will also be given few option to choose from. The active users on the YouTube platform can request to keep the unlisted videos to their current state through the fulfillment of a required form while there is also an option to make all the unlisted videos public, or re-upload them in the form of unlisted again, as the change will occur for all unlisted videos before 2017, and the re upload will change your date to the present year.

The last option, that is not to do anything will bring changes that are meant to happen, that is convert the unlisted videos to the private ones.

The change goes out on July 23rd 2021.

Read next: YouTube's New Controls Overlay Allows Users To Forward/Rewind Videos And Toggle Captions Right From The Homepage
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