At the moment, WhatsApp backups won’t count against your Google Drive storage. That may be about to change. It seems there is more bad news for the Facebook-owned messaging app. It seems a storage limitation of backups is in the future.
As we get some good news about WhatsApp, it’s not long before the bad news follows. Last week, WhatsApp rolled out end-to-end encryption to backups. This feature was very lacking and in high demand. Once this privacy feature is enabled, it means that WhatsApp, Facebook, Google, and Apple can't read your backups. This is a major bonus in protecting users’ privacy and data. This is an opt-in feature, and users will have to enable it from within their WhatsApp settings to start using it.
Google started limiting the storage options for Google Account users earlier this year. The first change came with scaling down the available storage size to 15GB. This storage is shared between Google Drive, Google Photos, and Gmail. If this wasn’t restrictive enough, there are reports that Google will also be introducing a storage limit for WhatsApp backup to Google Drive.
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Is a New WhatsApp Storage Limit Looming?
In 2018 WhatsApp negotiated a deal with Google that allowed unlimited backup storage. This is how users were able to enjoy backing up their WhatsApp data without ever getting a low storage notification. Before this agreement, WhatsApp backups did count against your Google Drive storage quota.
Following the above trend of Google starting to limit the data storage options offered to users, WhatsApp may be next. It doesn’t look like all of your WhatsApp backups will count against your available storage. It seems very likely that Google and WhatsApp will introduce an upper limit of 2000GB of free storage, and after that, it will start counting against your available storage on Google Drive.
If you’ve ever looked at the size of your WhatsApp backup, you will know how quickly this 2000GB will be used, especially if you are backing up chats, photos, documents, and videos from WhatsApp.
It is important to note that at this point, neither Google nor WhatsApp has released any official information confirming that a backup limitation is coming. For now, it’s just speculation. However, it might not be a bad idea for users to backup their WhatsApp history now, just in case, a limitation announcement is around the corner.
How Will Limitation Affect My Backup in Whatsapp?
WhatsApp chat backups on Google Drive is one of the easiest ways of switching between iOS and Android devices without losing your messages. If a backup storage limitation is put into effect, it will mean that users will be limited in which messages and data they will be able to keep.
With many businesses also using the messaging app, this could make things very complicated and time-consuming when it comes to backing up correspondence from clients, vendors, and business partners. And while it is possible to buy more storage with Google, many small businesses and individual users may not be able to purchase more storage for backups.
Is a Backup Size Feature to the Rescue?
WhatsApp seems to be aware of this new move from Google and is already working on a ‘Manage Backup Size’ feature. This feature will allow users to choose the content they wish to backup, including photos, videos, and other files. Currently, when making backups, your only option is deciding to include videos or not, so this will be a welcomed feature regardless of a storage limitation.
Not only will this feature allow users to choose what they want to backup, but it will also show them the size of the backup. This way, users will know how much of their storage quota will be used with their current backup.
Closing Thoughts
Although nothing has been announced officially by either Google or WhatsApp, it would appear that a backup storage limitation is not far off. This would mean that users’ WhatsApp backup would consume their Google Drive storage. While you can always pay to increase your Google Storage, WhatsApp is also working on a feature to help you choose what you back up. This is not great news as the speculated 2000GB of free WhatsApp backup storage will be filled up very quickly, leaving users with very few options.
How important are your WhatsApp backups to you? Will a limitation affect you?
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