(Chinese Version)

During the past National holiday, the latest upgrade packages of WeChat (Version 6.3.1) was released without notice. According to the introduction of this new upgrade, users not only can receive money by having others scan their QR codes, and send photos more quickly when chatting, but also “migrate Chats to other phones” in the latest version of WeChat.

However, WeChat didn’t mention that the user-unfriendly but useful “Cloud Migration” function was withdrawn at the same time.

The inconvenient fact is that WeChat has given up the “Cloud Migration” function and instead allowed users to transfer their Chats and data via WiFi to other devices. In other words, WeChat will no longer help users store their chat history in cloud storages and encourage users to manage and use their chat history by themselves. In this case, if users want to keep their chat history, they will have to find another phone of larger capacity and transfer their data to this data center.

What drives WeChat’s developer to make this adjustment?

WeChat users who have lots of friends and use WeChat a lot both in work and life might have met this problem oftentimes: as an increasing number of communication and work is done via WeChat, crucial information, such as customers’ phone number, address, files and photos are all stored in WeChat’s chat history, adding up size of WeChat to over 1 GB. These information were so important that users might need to transfer them to PCs or other devices. However, no effective approaches were developed to achieve this. That’s why WeChat carried out the “Cloud Migration” function to help users store their crucial information on cloud.

However, with the spread of WeChat in everyday life and work and the accumulation of crucial information of each WeChat user, WeChat might find it hard to set up a large enough cloud base to help users store these information. For example, if all WeChat users upgrade their crucial information at the size of 1 GB, then WeChat will have to store 1,000PB (1 EB) in total, the maximum storage size of a super cloud database, let alone the high purchase and maintenance cost. Worse still, if WeChat users’ crucial information continue to add up, each WeChat user will have crucial information at the size of over 1 TB to upgrade and transfer in 2020, and WeChat will have to set up a cloud database as large as 500 EB in order to hold these information. Even the purchase cost and electricity cost can cost WeChat a great deal. Let’s do some simple math: Google currently consumes around 2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity to store information at the size of 20 EB annually, so WeChat will have to consume 100 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year (the equivalent of the total electricity consumption volume of Shen Zhen annually) to hold all WeChat users’ information. Imagine the high cost of merely electricity.

Not only WeChat, but also Facebook and Apple all face similar problems. While Facebook has to store over 2 billion photos uploaded to its platform every day, Apple also has to find enough place to hold cloud backup files from over 1 billion iPhones. Electricity is needed not only to hold cloud databases but also cool them down. Similar to PCs, these cloud databases also need fans and air-conditioners to cool them down when operating. That’s why major American tech giants are all major investor of green energy. Whether it is setting up wind farms or develop photovoltaic power generation technology, the common goal is to save money and set up a green and environment-friendly cloud database.

Faced with the rising cost and the data explosion, these tech giants came up with various kinds of ideas, even weird ones. For example, some companies planned to save the cost of air-conditioning by setting up cloud databases in colder regions, such as Tanggula Mountain and the Antarctic, others planned to cool down their databases with cold air in North Europe and deep water in the Atlantic Ocean. If you take a close look at the track of all major tech companies in recent years, you might find that they are indeed moving to colder regions.

While Google is still working on using no extra electricity to cool down its cloud databases, WeChat avoided the bother by simply getting rid of the need to even set up cloud databases and encourage users to transfer their data to other devices via WiFi instead of uploading it to any cloud base.

In this sense, WeChat’s developers are not panicked by the possible data explosion in the future at all. Instead, it avoided the difficulty and won the first around against data explosion.

[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Liao Yu, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Levin Feng (Senior Translator at ECHO), working for TMTpost.