So glad this isn't going unnoticed. Does anyone remember that random email Google sent years ago (I suppose 2015 from this), informing us that WhatsApp backups no longer count towards your Drive quota limit?
No press releases, no fanfare about it, nothing. There was a small discussion of the intent of this, but the media didn't seem to care.
Wow wild. That is one of those details that slip by most of us with chronic inbox fatigue. So they not only were gathering the data, they actually made a business exception to their API quotas to ensure the data didn't have to be copied twice?!
The real intention behind this move is even worse: It completely negates the purpose of end-to-end encryption, since unencrypted backups can be easily accessed by governments or Google anytime.
The quota exception was so that people wouldn't be discouraged from backing up to Drive since it would no longer "cost" them any storage to do so.
Fun fact: Apple has effectively done an equivalent loophole by storing iCloud backups of your phone (including Messages) WITH the encryption key on their servers. So they have everything they need to read all your data.
No press releases, no fanfare about it, nothing. There was a small discussion of the intent of this, but the media didn't seem to care.