We’re about to give you some bad news, and there’s no way to sugarcoat it, so we’ll say it straight: WhatsApp backups coming soon on Android they will start counting in the Google account storage limit. Otherwise said, WhatsApp backups will no longer be “free“, because until now they didn’t eat up your Google Drive storage space, so you weren’t actually paying for them in any way. This is probably a good time to remind you how to free up space on Google Drive; but let’s move on.
This change will be active starting from December 2023first for users WhatsApp Beta (great time to be a beta tester!), and then gradually for everyone else from the beginning of 2024.
Google takes this opportunity to reiterate that personal accounts include 15 GB of free storagewhich is typically triple what competitive cloud storage offers, but be careful because this space is shared Between Google Drive, Gmail And Google Photos; and if you add emails with large attachments, holiday films and other contents, reaching 15 GB is not that difficult.
And soon even years and years of chatAnd messagesAnd photoAnd video exchanged on WhatsApp will help erode the boundary that separates a free account from a subscription to Google One. For those who have been actively using WhatsApp for some time, we can easily talk about a few gigabytes of data.
This also means that WhatsApp backups on Android will continue to work only if there is space available in your Google account. If this runs out, backups will be interrupted and will resume only after freeing space (or increasing it). In this regard we clarify that eliminating elements directly from WhatsApp will reduce the size of the next backup, thus saving space.
Obviously Google, to “help with the transition”, promises that it will offer “eligible users” some Limited one-time Google One promotions. After all, once you get into the loop, it’s difficult to get out, so Google only has something to gain from it, especially since the decision to erode WhatsApp’s backup space quota seems to be entirely its own.
It’s there though an exception: who was instead a subscriber to Google Workspace through work or school is not currently affected by this decision: after all, as they are already paying users, and therefore with more space available, this would still impact them less.
