WhatsApp for Android will again use Google Drive space for backups

Google and WhatsApp both announced that, starting for WhatsApp beta users in December, chat history, including images and videos, will again chew away at Google Drive storage, whether you have the company’s free 15GB plan or you pay for storage.

WhatsApp said the change will come to all of its Android users in the first half of 2024, and it will notify users 30 days ahead of time. The notification will be in the form of a banner in Settings > Chat > Chat backup.

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 wirelessly so long as both phones have Wi-Fi turned on. (No network connection is necessary — it’s a direct transfer.)

Google intimated that nothing about WhatsApp backups will change apart from the potential for storage limits affecting whether you can continue to cloud save your data. If you delete things in WhatsApp, it will delete them in your cloud backup, which can help you save space in Drive. And naturally, it points users to its Google One subscriptions if they want to upgrade to more storage. Google says it will offer “eligible users limited, one-time Google One promotions.”

Notably, this isn’t any different from how WhatsApp works on iOS except for the fact that Apple still only offers 5GB of cloud storage for nonpaying users.

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Google and Taito’s AR Space Invaders game is out now on Android and iOS

I’m not sure if World Defense is going to skyrocket into a Pokémon Go-sized hit, but the core concept of blasting a virtual alien by pointing your phone at the world around you seems like it could be fun. The game seems like it could be a good showcase of Google’s ARCore technology, which helps power the game. And you can take a silly AR selfie in a Space Invaders-themed outfit, so there’s that.

But we’ll have to wait and see if there’s enough to Space Invaders: World Defense to keep people interested after the novelty wears off. If you want to check the game out, you can get it on Google Play and the App Store.

Update July 18th, 12:21AM ET: The app is out now on iOS.

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