Google has changed how Android backups affect Google Drive account storage, with all backed up phone data now counting toward a user’s overall Google Account storage allowance. The new policy took effect on July 7 for people setting up Android backups for the first time, while Google plans to apply the change gradually to existing users over the coming months.
Under the company’s previous policy, most Android backup data did not count toward the account’s storage limit. Only media uploaded separately to Google Photos and photos or videos included in multimedia messages used up the available storage allowance, while items such as call history, contacts, and device settings remained outside the counted total. Under the updated policy, all Android backup data will now count toward the same shared storage pool used across services including Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. Android backups allow users to save phone data to their Google Accounts so they can restore it after switching devices, resetting a phone, or losing access to the original hardware, meaning the affected data spans a fairly broad range of everyday phone information.
A Google spokesperson told technology outlet Engadget that the policy change is expected to add only around 40 megabytes to the average user’s storage usage. The company explained that the increase should remain relatively small for most people because Android backups generally consist of settings, messages, and app information rather than large collections of photos or videos, which tend to consume far more storage space. For users already close to their storage limit, however, even a modest addition could push some accounts closer to running out of available space.
Alongside the policy change, Google is introducing additional controls that give users more say over which information gets included in their Android backups. These new options will appear within the device’s backup settings, allowing users to exclude device settings, call history, SMS messages, and MMS messages from their backups if they choose. Users will also continue to have the ability to decide whether data from individual applications should be backed up, giving people a more granular way to manage how much storage their backups consume or to prevent certain categories of information from being saved altogether.
The Android backup policy update follows another storage related change Google began testing in May, under which some newly created Google Accounts in selected regions received 5 gigabytes of free storage instead of the standard 15 gigabytes, unless the user linked and verified a phone number with their account. Google described that reduced allowance as a regional experiment for new accounts rather than a permanent global policy, with existing accounts left unaffected by the trial. Taken together, the two changes point to a broader ongoing review by Google of how it manages and allocates free storage across its account ecosystem, as the company continues adjusting the balance between user convenience and the resources consumed by backup and cloud storage services.
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