Bad news for users of the popular messaging app. In this case, disastrous news for those who use WhatsApp on Android, which in Spain is equivalent to practically all smartphone owners. As confirmed by the Wabetainfo portal, specialized in offering exclusive information on WhatsApp, unlimited backups on Google Drive would have their days numbered. What will happen then with user backups?
First it was Google Photos and now it seems that it will be Google Drive to make backup copies of WhatsApp that will impose limitations on users. Until now, by virtue of an agreement between Google and Facebook (owner of WhatsApp), the backup copies of the application did not take up space in Google Drive. This allowed us to have a backup of all the conversations together with the photos, videos, audios and other multimedia content of WhatsApp.
Free copies may be made, but with limitations
About 3 months ago, the popular website Wabetainfo found details about a new feature that WhatsApp was developing to manage chats when backing up to Google Drive. Broadly speaking, users could define which chats would go into the copy and which chats would stay out, all with the aim of taking up less space on Google Drive.
This doesn’t make much sense since the backup copies of WhatsApp for Android that are made in Google Drive do not count for the available space, that is, they are unlimited. It doesn’t matter if the user makes a 100-megabyte copy or makes a 3-gigabyte copy, their available space in the cloud remains the same. But from the looks of it, there’s a simpler explanation for this: unlimited free backups as we know them have their days numbered.
Como podemos ver en la captura superior, parece que ya hay evidencia suficiente para señalar que esto será una realidad más pronto que tarde. Se añadirán avisos cuando “Google Drive esté casi lleno” y también se empezará a ofrecer información sobre la entrada en vigor de estos cambios. Esto no debe sorprender a nadie porque, como ya hemos señalado, es lo mismo que sucedió hace un año con Google Fotos.
En resumen, seguiremos pudiendo realizar copias de seguridad gratuitas de chats, fotos, vídeos, etc, pero estarán limitadas. Es posible que tengamos una cantidad de gigas gratis y después ya no podamos guardar nada más, salvo que paguemos algún plan de almacenamiento superior. Por el momento, la información de estos planes de pago no ha trascendido. En WhatsApp para iOS, que guarda sus copias de seguridad en iCloud, esto ya funciona de esta forma más o menos.
