New Delhi: So far, the search giant has been offering all Android users unlimited space to store WhatsApp chat backups on Google Drive. Meaning, WhatsApp users could store chat backups on Google Drive indefinitely and it won’t count as a part of the standard storage space that the company provides to all Google account holders. But a recent report has leaked a potential change in company’s policy that might discontinue offering limited space for storing WhatsApp chat backups.
According to the report, Google is planning to give a certain quota of storage space to Android users for storing WhatsApp backups for free, but it will be a limited plan. A screenshot of WhatsApp’s code shows that the messaging app will show users their backup limit for their chat on Google Drive. In addition to that, the code shows that WhatsApp will also warn users when the limit for their chat backups on Google Drive has reached or when the allocated Drive space is almost full. However, details about the new storage plan remain unknown for now.
Furthermore, the report claims that this feature was first reported back in October last year. At the time, reports suggested that WhatsApp was working on a feature called Manage Backup Size that would show users the size of their WhatsApp chat backups and give users toggle buttons to exclude certain file types such as photos, audio, videos, documents and other media file from chat backups on Google Drive. At the time, it remained unclear why WhatsApp would offer a functionality to manage chat backups when Google Drive offered unlimited space for storing WhatsApp chat backups.
But in light of the recent reports, it can be assumed that Google will not provide unlimited Google Drive space for storing chat backups. Also, neither WhatsApp nor Google has made a formal announcement in this regard, so we’ll have to wait for the companies to clarify how this feature would work.