Google Drive Ownership and link consistency…

In their root folder is a folder that I own via my private gmail, let’s call it X.

In X other people (company accounts) added their own folders.

Question: I want to be detached from that Google Drive, I want their drive admin own my X folder. This type of ownership change is not allowed as far as I understand.

How will links and permissions behave when drive admin creates Folder Y and drags subfolders from X into it?

Side question: Can two folders have the same name in one location?

Claude.ai:

Good questions. Let me walk through what happens.

Ownership transfer reality

You’re right that direct ownership transfer of a folder between different organizations (your personal Gmail → their Workspace) isn’t supported. Google only allows ownership transfers within the same organization, or in some cases from personal to Workspace within the same domain context. So the “drag into a new folder Y owned by their admin” workaround is the typical approach.

What happens when admin creates Y and drags subfolders from X into Y

Here’s the key thing to understand: in Google Drive, “moving” a folder doesn’t copy or recreate it — it just changes the parent. The folder itself (with its ID, contents, permissions, and share links) stays exactly the same. Only its location in the hierarchy changes.

So when the admin drags a subfolder from X into Y:

• Ownership of the moved subfolder does NOT change. If a company employee owned that subfolder while it sat inside X, they still own it after it’s inside Y. Only the parent pointer updated.
• Share links remain valid. The folder ID is the same, so any existing link still works.
• Permissions on the subfolder itself are unchanged. Anyone who had explicit access still has it.
• Inherited permissions change, though. This is the important part. Previously, the subfolder inherited permissions from X (which you owned and had configured). After the move, it inherits from Y instead. So if someone had access to a subfolder only because they had access to X, they’ll lose that access once it’s under Y — unless Y grants them equivalent access or they had direct permissions on the subfolder.
• Files inside the subfolders are not touched at all. Same ownership, same links, same direct permissions. They just transitively live under a new top-level parent.

One caveat: if any of those subfolders were originally created inside X by you (rather than by company employees), you still own them, and moving them into Y doesn’t fix that — you’d remain the owner. The “drag into Y” strategy only cleans things up for folders/files actually owned by company accounts. For anything you own, you’d need to either transfer ownership to a company account (possible if you can add a company account as editor and then make them owner — but cross-organization ownership transfers are restricted and usually require admin involvement on the receiving Workspace) or have the company recreate/copy those items.

After everything is moved, you can then remove yourself from X, or have the admin delete X entirely. Folder X being deleted doesn’t affect the moved subfolders — they live under Y now, independent of X’s fate.

Side question: duplicate folder names

Yes. Google Drive identifies folders (and files) by unique IDs, not by name. Two folders with identical names can absolutely coexist in the same parent location. The UI will show them both, and you can tell them apart only by contents, modified date, or owner. This sometimes happens accidentally when people create or sync folders, and Drive doesn’t warn you about it.

Practical suggestion

Before the admin starts moving things, it’s worth running through “owned by” filters in X to see exactly which items you personally own versus which are owned by company accounts. The moves will work cleanly for company-owned items; the items you personally own need a separate plan (recreate, copy, or coordinate an ownership transfer through their Workspace admin if their domain policy allows accepting transfers from outside).