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WhatsApp backups on Android will soon count toward your Google Account storage (9to5google.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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[–] SuperJetShoes 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They've been playing the long game here...encroaching on your Drive storage for years

Gmails didn't used to count towards storage
Photos didn't used to count towards storage (unless stored in "Original" quality)

I'm wagering "Location Data" will be along soon. Then "number of passwords stored".

Next move will be "number of connected devices", even though that doesn't impact how much they have to store.

Finally they will get round to billing you on your number of individual body hairs (shaving in breach of T&Cs).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

My problem is that I can't even back up in reduced quality without it just deleting the original off my phone. Leave my phone alone I have the storage I just want the extra backup. So now I use no backup at all

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google just placed one more token on the de-google my phone bin.

Funny you can go from magnanimous corp to greedy corp in a few short years.

Just remember they pay 20 Billion dollars every year to Apple just to be the default browser!

And then they reduce my allowed storage, make YouTube explode in ads, while they cancel products. It must be rough times for the little mega corp.

[–] ziggurat 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I realized the change, when they changed their motto away from don't be evil.

I don't care what their motto is now, if they needed to change their motto away from don't be evil. It's because they couldn't follow it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Is it like 5-10 years ago they changed it?

It was an eye opener for me when YouTube ramped their ads up around 2020, they did it sneakily across some months.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

I thought it already was

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Let's hope we can export them too then! I stopped using WhatsApp a few years go, but it would be nice to have access to my chats, unencrypted... at the moment only iPhone users can do this

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Isn't this a legal requirement in the EU at least, to let you download your data?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I hate that it's still not possible to set your own storage for backups. Neither WhatsApp nor Android's system backup support anything besides Google Drive.

[–] tinsuke 4 points 1 year ago

For apps that don't disallow regular backups (like WhatsApp does), Lineage OS and Calyx support Seedvault, which is a 1:1 alternative to Google Drive, except it saves the backup as an encrypted file.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well I'm fucked.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Does it drive you crazy?