Google Tacitly Acknowledges the End of ChromeOS as It Launches Googlebooks ⇥ arstechnica.com
Ryan Whitwam, Ars Technica:
Like Chromebooks, Googlebooks are guaranteed 10 years of software support. However, the latest Chromebook models won’t get that in the traditional way. Google’s support page says that it plans to continue ChromeOS support through “mid-2034,” so there are already devices with support windows beyond that.
[…]
Rather than get into a Windows XP situation in which it had to keep extending update support, the support page says that Google intends to upgrade newer Chromebooks to the Googlebook OS. It doesn’t have specifics on the timeline or which models will be included, but the company does note that, in many cases, this will be a “direct migration.”
Google promised 10 years of updates for all Chromebooks, and it’s now breaking that promise for anyone buying a Chromebook between now and whenever the last Chromebook rolls off the production line. Sadly, we live in a world where corporations are free to make and break whatever promises they want virtually free of consequences, and as society we’re so used to it that anti-consumer behaviour like this barely elicits a shrug.
I was ready to link to this in full agreement but I first wanted to verify this assumption that ChromeOS updates will stop being delivered after 2034. I checked the Chromebook auto-update policy, and it turns out there are 59 models with support through 2035, and 38 with support through 2036. So it seems Google is fulfilling that ten-year promise, right?
Well, that is not exactly true, either. I compared the update policy document against Best Buy’s Chromebook results as a kind of quick benchmark. The first result at time of writing is Lenovo’s Chromebook m 15.3″ which, indeed, Google says will receive updates until June 2036. The second result is the ASUS CM14 Flip 14″. Google says that will only get updates until June 2033. That product was released in 2023, so that would technically qualify as ten years of updates from day one, but Best Buy is showing this three year old computer as the second most relevant search result for “Chromebook”. The third result is a refurbished product so I will skip it. The fourth is the ASUS CX15, and Google says that will get auto-updates until June 2032 — but that spec matches the version released only earlier this year. Perhaps that is a bigger scandal: you could have bought this Chromebook in May, well before the Googlebook announcement, expecting ten years of updates, but Google only says it will deliver them for the next six years.
Whitwam:
It’s understandable that Google doesn’t want to make this more clear — Chromebooks may not have caught on for consumers, but they’re big in schools and business. Googlebooks won’t have comparable management tools for a year or more, according to the support page. If Google is more open about ditching ChromeOS, its Chromebook business could take a dive before Googlebooks are even theoretically in a position to take over.
I disagree — I think Google absolutely should make this stuff clear. What it does to sales is of concern only to Google and its shareholders. And, anyway, the Googlebooks announcement is probably going to affect current sales either way as I.T. departments figure out what to buy. Might as well tell a complete story instead of leaving questions unanswered.
Maybe I am, as a Mac user, simply jealous of contemplating ten years of upgrades.