WhatsApp users on Android smartphones might soon have to pay for Google cloud storage if they want to keep their chat histories. WABetaInfo spotted strings of code in an in-development version of WhatsApp that suggest users will be allowed to limit what data from their WhatsApp chat histories they want to back up. That is reportedly so they can avoid hitting their Google Drive storage limit.
The WhatsApp chat backup feature allows users to store an up-to-date copy of their chats and media in those chats in the event that their smartphone is lost or suffers a critical failure, or if they wish to migrate their chats to a new device.
On Android, the Facebook-owned messaging platform uses Google Drive, while the iPhone version uses iCloud. Currently, WhatsApp backups on Android don’t count towards total Google Drive usage.
Google offers all its account users 15GB of free cloud storage, shared between applications such as Gmail, Photos, and Drive, but excludes WhatsApp. That means you can effectively store as much data from WhatsApp as you want without paying a cent for it.
Based on the changes seen by WABetaInfo, Google will still offer a certain quota of storage WhatsApp backups for free, but it will impose a limit.
It is currently unclear how much storage this will include or if there will be an option to upgrade WhatsApp-specific storage at a particular cost.
The new code in the incoming version of WhatsApp includes mention of “Google Drive backup changing” and strings that describe notification messages that the user’s Google Drive is almost full and alerts when the limit is reached.
Source: mybroadband
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