Google may be about to discontinue free, unlimited WhatsApp chat history backups for Android users via its Google Drive cloud storage platform.
A new version of WhatsApp beta for Android shows that unlimited backups will come to an end in the near future and free backups will be limited in nature.
Strings discovered in Android 2.22.4.8 source code by WABetaInfo contain text like: “Google Drive limit in effect” and “gdrive backupq quota reached” along with indications of when this change will take place. This is referenced in the text “%1$s limit starts on %2$s”.
WABetaInfo said it spotted something in a previous Android beta a few months ago, but wanted to wait for evidence to surface in the app before posting anything on the matter. Now that evidence has surfaced. And it’s below.
It seems that Google is planning to do with WhatsApp backups what it has already done with its own Google Photos storage, which initially promised users unlimited free backups of photos and videos in high (but not original) resolution.
It’s not clear how much free storage WhatsApp users will continue to benefit from, or whether, like Google Photos, anything already uploaded to the cloud would be safely tucked away and the cap would only apply to future uploads.
You might like…
WhatsApp may start counting Google Drive storage, and the limits depend on how much free storage the company has to work with. Users may need to start prioritizing whether they only want to back up texts rather than photos and videos.
Google has yet to publicly comment on whether it plans to end free backups. However, that was probably in the post at the moment when it started imposing restrictions on users of its own Google Photos app.