Some messages are meant to be forgotten, but some messages are meant to be treasured.
It's intriguing how some messages fade away like whispers in the wind, while others linger, etched in people's memories like precious gems, when they hold their own significance. These messages shape people's experience and the tapestry of their lives.
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging apps in terms of sheer numbers. For more than many years, the app provides users the ability to backup their conversations to Google Drive, meaning that users can store important chats, media and also stickers.
When users connect their Google Account with the app, WhatsApp is able to automatically sync data to the cloud-based storage, based on the frequency users have selected.
This way, if ever users accidentally clear their chat history, uninstall the app, or set up a new device, they can easily restore what they lost.
This is changing.
Google and WhatsApp have announced a change where WhatsApp chat and media backups on Android will "start counting toward your Google Account cloud storage limit," starting December 2023.
Whereas previously, WhatsApp users can backup their data to Google Drive free of charge, this time, their uploaded data will count towards their quota.
If users hit their storage limit, they have to free up space to resume backups by removing items they do not need.
Google is already offering storage management tools to quickly bulk delete photos and other large files that date back to when it made changes to its Google Photos backup policy. Another suggestion is to just delete items from WhatsApp, thus "reducing storage used by your next WhatsApp backup."
The other alternative is pay up, and subscribe to Google One, which starts at $1.99 per month for 100GB.
Google said that it will offer “eligible users limited, one-time Google One promotions."
This change in policy is essentially a reversal from 2018, when Google Drive started allowing WhatsApp users to backup their data for free.
This change is rolling out starting December 2023 month for WhatsApp Beta users, and will "slowly roll out to all WhatsApp Android users across the first half of 2024."
To inform users, WhatsApp said in a FAQ page that it is going to up a banner in WhatsApp Settings > Chats > Chat backup "30 days before this change happens."
It's worth noting that the changes only apply to personal Google Accounts.
"If you have a Google Workspace subscription through work or school, your storage quota is not impacted at this time," said Google in its own support page.
The change only affects users of WhatsApp on Android, and that it isn’t any different from how WhatsApp works on iOS, except for the fact that Apple still only offers 5GB of cloud storage for non-paying users.
Users who don’t want to use their Google Account for backups will have the option to use the WhatsApp Chat Transfer when they’re moving to a new Android device, which works through direct wireless transfer, as long as both phones have Wi-Fi turned on.
Local backup is also an option if users don't want to use Google.