WhatsApp users world wide have a reason to smile after the messaging app reached a major understanding with a fellow multinational and technology powerhouse Google Inc.
Starting November this year, you won’t need to sacrifice valuable Google Drive storage space to back up your messages.
As has been the norm, any WhatsApp data that was backed up onto Google’s Drive counted toward the space you had available in the cloud. But WhatsApp, now a part of Mark Zuckerburg’s Facebook, cut a deal with Google to make those backups completely free, even while staying inside your personal account.
Critics, while applauding the move, asserted and clearly so, that it is going to be a handy way to keep tabs on all of your messages if you lose or break a phone that you use regularly for messaging.
WhatsApp backups will stop counting towards your Google Drive storage
Important to note is that WhatsApp is a little different from other texting apps that store messages on their servers since it requires users to back up their messages to another company’s cloud service to sync chats between phones. Apple users have their messages stored in iCloud, while their Android counterparts have always used the Google Drive.
However, the development comes with some notices. As result of that November update, any WhatsApp backups that haven’t been updated for more than a year will be wiped out.
And as usual, the company recommends connecting your phone to Wi-Fi when doing any backups, since “backup files can vary in size and consume mobile data, causing additional charges.”
What’s remaining is that WhatsApp users can still set up their account to automatically back up any chats to the cloud or their device’s local storage, or they can do it manually by going into the app’s “settings” tab.
