Key takeaways
- Meet has no total-hours screen: admins on editions with Vault search recordings there, and without Vault each organizer checks the Google Meet folder (and Legacy Meet Recordings) in Drive.
- Meet log events in the Admin console count every minute of every meeting, so they overstate your recorded hours.
- Vault exports Drive files in compressed files of up to 10 GB with an XML metadata file and deletes the export after 15 days; the Admin console's Data export needs a super admin with 2-Step Verification and usually takes 72 hours.
- You don't need to export anything to apply: have your recorded hours, years of history and user count ready, and the data vendor anonymizes the records before any AI lab sees them.
01
What is Google Meet data, and why do AI labs and data vendors buy it?
The short answer
Google Meet data is the recordings of a company's video meetings, plus the chat logs and attendance sheets that Meet saves beside them. AI labs (companies that build and train AI models) and data vendors (companies that anonymize business records and package them for those labs) buy an anonymized copy because a recorded meeting shows speech together with the screens being discussed, from the first agenda item to the decision.
What a Google Meet recording holds
Google Meet is Google's video meeting service, and a Google Workspace company can record its meetings. A recording captures the active speaker and anything presented on screen, and Google saves it in the meeting organizer's Google Drive, in a folder named Google Meet with one subfolder for each meeting.
Other files can land in the same subfolder. When continuous meeting chat is off, Meet saves the meeting's chat conversation as an SBV file, a plain-text caption format whose entries carry timestamps, and it saves attendance as a Google Sheets file.
Why recorded meetings teach an AI model something
An AI model learns by studying a very large number of examples and finding the patterns in them, and those examples are called training data. Public video shows presentations that were rehearsed and edited. A company's own meeting recordings show how work is actually discussed: someone shares a spreadsheet, colleagues question it, and the group reaches a decision.
The attendance sheet and chat log add context to the video. They show who was present and how long each person stayed, and what people typed while others spoke.
AI labs now want to train AI agents, software that carries out a job step by step, and an agent learns a job from records of that job being done. A data vendor can turn anonymized meetings into worked examples that an agent studies like an answer key, or build a practice copy of a meeting workflow in which the agent is scored on each attempt. The full mechanism is in AI training data: why AI companies want your company's data.
How Google Meet fits into a dataset
Meeting recordings are usually one part of a company's dataset, next to email, documents and chat histories. Companies are paid $100K to $2M or more per dataset, according to micro1, the data vendor we typically refer companies to. The price covers the whole dataset, not each app on its own, and what your data is worth explains what moves it.
02
Where does Google Meet show how much data you have?
The short answer
Google Meet has no total-hours screen. On Workspace editions that include Vault, an admin searches all recordings in Vault by owner, meeting ID and start time. Without Vault, each meeting organizer opens the Google Meet folder in their own Drive. The Admin console's Meet log events report lists meeting time, but it counts every meeting, recorded or not.
How to find your recordings with Vault
Vault is Google's tool for administrators and legal staff to search, hold and export a company's Workspace data. It can search Meet recordings, as Google's Vault search guide describes.
- Sign in to vault.google.com as an admin whose account has been set up for Vault.
- Open Matters and create or open a matter. A matter is a Vault workspace that groups related searches and exports.
- Choose Drive as the service, because Vault searches Meet recordings as part of Drive and Meet data, and select the organizational units or accounts to search.
- Search for Meet recordings. Vault matches on the title, the owner, the meeting ID and the recording start time, and the term
type:videolimits the results to videos. - Read the number of results, then open a sample of recordings to note their lengths and file sizes.
Vault cannot search the top organizational unit of your organization. Select child organizational units or individual accounts, up to 5,000 accounts in one Drive search.
How to find your recordings without Vault
Without Vault, each organizer checks Drive. Recordings are saved in the organizer's own Drive, in the Google Meet folder with one subfolder per meeting. Since July 2026, Google has been renaming the older Meet Recordings folder to Legacy Meet Recordings and moving it inside the Google Meet folder, and old links keep working, according to Google's recording guide. Check both places so that older recordings are counted.
Why Meet log events are not a recording count
In the Admin console, Reporting > Audit and investigation > Meet log events lists meeting activity, including each participant's Duration (seconds), and the list exports to Sheets or CSV. It needs the Audit & Investigation administrator privilege, as Google's Meet log events page explains.
These durations cover all meeting time, recorded or not, so they overstate the hours you can license. Use them to see how busy your meetings are, not as your hours of recordings.
Which editions can record
Recording is available on Business Standard, Business Plus, Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus and Education Plus (for users with a Staff license), as well as the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Workspace Individual and Google One plans with 2 TB or more of storage. An admin also has to allow recording in the Admin console. Vault needs an edition that includes a Vault license, such as Business Plus, Enterprise Standard and Plus, or any Education edition, or a Vault add-on license where Google offers one.
03
What should you know about your Google Meet data before you apply?
The short answer
Have three facts ready: your total hours of recorded meetings, how many years you have been recording and how many users are on an edition that can record. They go into the data manifest, the written summary of which apps hold your records, how many years each covers and roughly how much. You don't need to run an export to find them.
The hours of recordings
Enter the combined length of all recordings, with hours as the unit. When all you have is file sizes, measure a few recordings to learn how many hours fit in one gigabyte (GB), then apply that rate to the total size. Do not enter Meet log event durations as recorded hours, since they include every meeting, recorded or not.
The years of history
For years in use, take the date of your oldest recording.
The number of seats
Count the users who are on a Workspace edition that allows recording.
What you don't need to do first
You don't need to export anything to apply, and you don't need to clean or scrub an export. The data vendor anonymizes the records before anyone else sees them, and nothing moves until a lawyer-reviewed license is signed. The application, the intro call and each later step are laid out in how to sell your company's data.
04
How do you export your full Google Meet history?
The short answer
With Vault, an admin runs the search for Meet recordings and clicks Export, and downloads the result within 15 days. Vault splits Drive exports into compressed files of up to 10 GB, with an XML file describing each item. Without Vault, a super admin can use the Admin console's Data export tool, which exports every user's Drive files and usually takes 72 hours.
Exporting with Vault
Vault is the more precise route, because it exports only the recordings that match a search. Google describes the file layout in Export your search results.
- Run the search for Meet recordings in Vault, across the organizational units or accounts you want, as described above.
- Select Export and start the export.
- When the export is ready, download it from the matter's Exports list. Vault deletes the export 15 days after it becomes available.
Vault packs Drive files into compressed files of up to 10 GB each and starts a new file whenever the total passes 10 GB. A metadata file in XML format (a structured text file) lists each exported item, including its owner and its dates.
Exporting without Vault
A super admin can use the Data export tool in the Admin console. It exports the same data that users could download with Google Takeout, which includes their Drive files, so recordings are in it.
- Sign in to the Admin console as a super administrator whose account is at least 30 days old and has 2-Step Verification turned on.
- Go to Data > Data import & export > Data export and start an export of all users.
- Wait for the notification email that every super admin receives when the export is ready, then download the files from the Google Cloud Storage bucket it points to.
According to Google's Data export page, the files cannot be ready sooner than 48 hours after you start, the usual wait is 72 hours, and a large organization can wait as long as 14 days. Google deletes the exported data automatically 60 days after the export began. A company with more than 1,000 users should contact Google Workspace support before using the tool. The tool does not export deleted files unless Vault retained them.
What a recording contains and where it stops
Recordings capture the active speaker and anything presented. A meeting can be recorded for 8 hours in total, then the recording stops automatically. Recordings use Drive storage, and a meeting can be recorded only if both the organizer and the organization have free Drive space.
With continuous meeting chat off, the chat log is an SBV file; attendance arrives as a Google Sheets file. Each line of a chat log has a timestamp measured from the start of the recording, the sender's name and the message text.
Sources: Google Workspace Help pages Use Vault to search Google Drive, Meet & Sites, Export your search results, Data export, Meet log events and Record a video meeting. Steps checked against these pages in November 2026.
05
What stays private when Google Meet data is licensed?
The short answer
Each recording stays owned by its organizer, and the company chooses which organizers or organizational units are included. The data vendor replaces names and other personal details with consistent stand-ins before an AI lab sees anything. The company keeps ownership of its recordings, and the license covers defined records for a defined use.
You choose what is in scope
A Vault search can be limited to particular organizational units or accounts, so a company can license the recordings of its sales and support teams and leave out a leadership team's meetings. The data vendor also deletes records too sensitive to clean safely instead of anonymizing them.
Names are replaced before a lab sees them
Anonymization means replacing every detail that identifies a person, such as a name or an email address, with a stand-in that is the same every time it appears. The meeting still reads in order, so a lab can learn from it, but it no longer says who the people are. The diagram below shows an attendance sheet and a chat excerpt before and after.
The method, including what is deleted outright and how you review samples, is in how company data is anonymized for AI training.
Ownership and payment
Licensing gives the buyer limited rights to a copy, while the company keeps ownership of the originals. The terms that matter, such as exclusivity, permitted use and deletion, are covered in data licensing. micro1 pays in full within 30 days of accepting the data, usually as a single payment.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Where did our Meet Recordings folder go?
Google renamed it. Since July 2026, the old Meet Recordings folder is called Legacy Meet Recordings and sits inside the new Google Meet folder, where each new meeting gets its own subfolder. Links to older recordings keep working.
Which Workspace plans allow us to record a Meet?
Business Standard, Business Plus, Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus and Education Plus (Staff license) can all record. So can the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Workspace Individual and Google One with 2 TB or more, once an admin turns recording on for the account.
Is there a maximum Google Meet recording length?
Yes. Google stops the recording by itself once a meeting has been recorded for a total of 8 hours.
Can the Meet log events report tell us how many hours we recorded?
No. Meet log events list the duration of every participant's time in every meeting, recorded or not, so the total is higher than your recorded hours. Count recordings in Vault or in the Google Meet folders instead.
How long do we have to download a Vault export?
15 days. Vault deletes the export after that, and you would have to run it again.
Do we need to export Google Meet before we apply?
No. The application takes about two minutes and shares no data. You only need your approximate recorded hours, your years of recording and your user count for the intro call. The full export is needed later, when the records are transferred after you sign the license.
What is Google Meet data worth to AI labs and data vendors?
Meeting recordings are priced as part of a whole dataset rather than on their own. Companies are paid $100K to $2M or more per dataset, according to micro1, and the price depends on the years of history and how completely the records show each job. What your data is worth explains the factors.
Bottom line
Know what is in Google Meet, then see what it is worth
You don't need to export anything to apply. Apply in two minutes, describe your records on the intro call, and micro1, the data vendor we typically refer companies to, prices the whole dataset and sends an offer 1–2 days later.
Not legal, tax or financial advice. Figures come from micro1's published pages and public reporting as of November 2026.