Seems to be more reasonable than this title suggests?
Some comments:
"So they have introduced a major change and said any older Chromebooks bought going forward will only get 8. So its not a retrospective reduction for existing customers." (Edit: actually I think this comment is wrong, if you bought a Chromebook 1 year ago, you'd only get 9 years of ChromeOS updates)
"From my understanding of the article, it sounds like ChromeOS support is getting pared back for those devices, but the devices themselves should still be supported, albeit via a (planned but not yet in existence) migration path to GooglebookOS."
Reasonable would have been to deprecate support in 10 years, not 8.
Saying "yeah, we promised you 10 years of support, but if you just bought yours the last two years of that will only be supported if you switch to a completely different OS. But happily some of our devices have a direct migration path (if that's not yours, deal with it). Better hope the features you need will be available in our new OS by then, because right now they are not" is a major rugpull and not reasonable at all
“Completely different OS” might not affect the user experience all that much, though, since these devices are for running Chrome and it will still run Chrome. (And be better at other things like running Android apps, presumably.)
We don’t have any details about what the upgrade path will look like and it probably hasn’t been implemented yet, so this is all speculative.
If they didn’t do an OS change, they could still evolve it a lot over 10 years. Chrome could evolve too. You’re trusting the vendor to not screw up your workflow either way.
These devices are usually bought on contract, with lots of lock in.
In particular, there are lots of schools getting screwed over financially. Maybe they’ll switch vendors, or use the money for education. Chromebook spending has a strong negative correlation with educational performance.
As a parent, I am supposed to have control over my kids’ personal information, but the schools firehose all the most sensitive kids’ info they have to an unlawful marketing firm that I do not trust. How do I opt out?
they do not. I don't work there anymore and don't have any particular goodwill towards the employer that laid me off last year but I can guarantee that any data related to the education sector is under extremely strict controls.
Legally they cannot, no. And sure, they could violate contracts and break data protection laws. But they’d be trading an enormous hit on their reputation, who knows how many hundreds of millions in educational contracts for, what, some basic demographic data on kids? Data they’ll almost certainly be able to get via other means once the kid becomes an adult?
I don’t like Google’s involvement in education. I don’t like Google much at all. But we should still be able to examine this stuff rationally without devolving into conspiracy theories that don’t make logical sense.
Homeschool, vote for free school choice, vote for getting the subsidized funds to where you actually send your kids. Solves most problems related to bad school policies.
> vote for getting the subsidized funds to where you actually send your kids
…which is what happens today with public schools. Your case only makes sense if you’re sending your kid to private school and would like public funds to help pay for it.
School vouchers allow richer families to go to private school while preventing lower income folks from doing so, exacerbating problems with educational achievement.
School vouchers are the only fair way to do schooling. Rich people paying for more expensive things isn’t bad. They just shouldn’t be forced to pay for the more expensive thing that they use as well as the less expensive thing they don’t use
Surely that depends entirely on your definition of the word “fair”. Is it fair that a lower income child is deprived of an opportunity to improve their life through education because their parents can’t afford it?
Ultimately the debate here is “should richer people have to contribute back to society to help the lives of the poorer people”? Of course you can say no to that. But the majority of society doesn’t agree.
“School choice” is just marketing language to disguise “funneling general tax dollars into private schools so wealthy people don’t have to pay for the privilege.”
Wealthy people don't want more students going to their children's schools. School choice is about funneling public funds to evangelical (aka extremist) Christian churches.
No. It's about pushing decisions out to the edges and empowering parents (and students) to help run the school system. To frame it this way is to deny the powerful evolution brought about by real choice.
Isn't it retrospective to all customers who purchased in the last 2 years? They're not saying a Chromebook bought yesterday gets 10 years but one bought tomorrow only gets 8. They're saying they all end in 2034. If you bought one yesterday expecting 10 years of updates, you got screwed.
It would be relatively straightforward to do automatically. Both OS's use a Linux kernel and Linux filesystems. Whether they will or should is a different question, but technically it's straightforward.
My pet theory with this move from Chromebooks to Googlebooks is simply that Chromebooks have a major stink on their entire brand reputation, especially in the younger generation that went through school with terrible cheap (and likely used/damaged) Chromebooks being given to them for schoolwork.
I think if you say "Chromebook" around most 20-something and unders, they have an instant negative association with the word.
Unless you are the most hardcore Google fan, I don't see why you want to spend $1k on a Googlebook instead of a Windows laptop or MacBook at the same price range.
Agree from a branding standpoint. Idk what a googlebook is or is going to be, but if it’s kneecapped the same way Chromebook, Android, and “iPad OS” are, it’s never going to be a real competitor.
And by this I mean being captive to App Store/Play Store, the weird “everything has to be inside Chrome” thing of Chromebook, the obtuse window-management contortions of iPad, etc. People expect to be able to install software of their choice on a real computer. I already have a smartphone. I don’t need a second giant one with a keyboard.
If they want to actually compete they should put their weight behind a real Linux distribution that works normally. Totally OK to add all the custom features they want, like running Android apps. But just don’t make it so weird.
(And no, developer-mode side loading doesn’t change any of that.)
I was a hardcore Google fan and that's what made me hate them. Trying to invest in their ecosystem is like being in an abusive relationship. They can't commit to anything, so any product you make part of your workflow will be inevitably ripped away from you with an assured promise that the new, blatantly worse thing replacing it is so much better.
All of their output is entirely dependent on internal product owners using Google products as stepping stones to ladder climb. Once they replaced a product, or did a giant 2.0 revamp, they move on and no one wants to maintain it.
> My pet theory with this move from Chromebooks to Googlebooks is simply that Chromebooks have a major stink on their entire brand reputation
I think you're right. Many of the students I've talked to have an immediate reaction of "slow, limited" when asked about a Chromebook. The early years of under-powered hardware and limited storage/memory really did them a disservice when it comes to brand
> ChromeOS devices will continue to receive regular updates and security patches through mid-2034. For qualifying devices purchased today whose 10-year support lifecycle extends beyond 2034, Google is committed to supporting your transition to Googlebook OS, with many devices offering direct migration paths.
In other words, support will be offered until 2034. if you're buying a new Chromebook today and intend to keep it for longer than 8 years, you're doing so at your own risk.
> 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
So, they're changing the promise from now on, and not breaking it for past users. Doesn't sound like they're breaking their promise to me.
The willful ignorance of the tech community is getting out of hand. This is the same thing as the "windows 10 is the last version of windows" discourse which stems from the absolutely abysmal state of tech journalism. You would think that by now that it would at least match financial journalism, but apparently we're fine settling for people who don't care about or understand what they are writing about.
This isn't an issue, the 10 years of support was promised for the hardware, not the software. They are fulfilling that promise by updating the devices to GooglebookOS.
Was “automatic“ a part of the promise? Now there’s some e.g. fixed income seniors sold on the inexpensive, hassle-free gear who have to deal with a lack of a “direct migration path“ in their later years?
Is Googlebook OS going to be "open source" like Chrome OS was (through Chromium)? Or is this also a forced transition from open -> closed? (that would make me far madder than simply forcing a migration).
I too would like to know this. I suspect there won't be an equivalent of ChromiumOS for Googlebook OS. Likely a combo of AOSP and proprietary closed source code.
I'm sure it was just a pinky promise with a million lines of small print saying they can actually do whatever they want regardless of what they said.
Also, in 2034 things will likely be radically different in computing. A local llm will likely either make such considerations entirely obsolete because support will be easy, or all current tech will be taken away from consumers anyway and everything will be much tighter controlled and monitored.
Statements a manufacturer makes about their device before purchase are usually treated as legally binding. Saying you provide 10 years of updates is just like saying your charger delivers 60W.
You don't need a contract for that, if the statement is untrue the product is now defective. And if done on purpose this is usually considered fraud
They’ve already got the necessary lawyers to negotiate the class action settlement and to send checks for a portion of the purchase price to every class member, and they calculated that this would still save them money vs. whatever the alternative was.
I'm on the school board for our school, and they last a few years if we're lucky. There are some that survive up to maybe 7, but they accrete so much damage by then. While I think it would have been ideal for G to keep it 10 years, I think in practice it won't matter for many people. Most students are awfully hard on those things after all.
Is anyone surprised at this? Abandoning products in an untimely fashion is their specialty. I've never bought a hardware product from them for that reason, except for a 2nd gen Chromecast which was something whose longevity I didn't care too much about.
if you are a school or similar which ordered a large stack of them in the last two years then yes, especially if multiple such organizations join together on a legal case.
In the end "help with migration to" isn't the same supporting the existing product.
And if you advertised a product with 10 year support that _is_ legally binding (in the EU) and a clear cut case of you losing around 10-20% of the advertised value.
Given that legal costs might be to some degree covered by legal insurance and it being a clean cut case this is likely worth the money. But also a case where google can "just settle and not care" as in many cases schools did more things like forcing parents to buy chrome books then buying them themself, so it's unlikely to amass any relevant damage amount for Google.
More funny would be if the judge rules "10 years promised? You are cable of delivering 10 years?! You have to deliver it! And for all chrome books bought [8;10[ years before the deadline not just the suing party".
I don’t think school districts have the necessary thousands of highly-paid lawyers it would take to scare Google. Schools might join a class-action and get 20% credits for the 2 years of lost support, towards their next purchase, which Google will make sure is a little bit more expensive. The schools aren’t going to switch to Macs that cost literally 2x and are more fragile.
Besides, I’d be shocked if any Chromebook lasts 8 years in a school! Kids literally stick metal in the ports to fry them on purpose, and drop and throw them, etc.
Not saying Google is good, just that they don’t care about this and have no business need to care.
> In the end "help with migration to" isn't the same supporting the existing product.
I don't know that that's clearly true. Apple gives at least 5 to 7 years of updates past the last sale date for computers. (I don't know if this is an explicit promise or not; they have an explicit hardware support for 5 years and limited support for vintage [5-7 years old] equipment.)
I don't think I get to demand 5 years of support for specifically Sonoma or Tahoe on that equipment, but rather just N years of "some usable version of an OS and support to transition to it".
Replacing ChromeOS with GooglebookOS 8 years from now seems not that different from replacing Tahoe with Golden Gate.
The other alternative could be "we still support ChromeOS for 10 years, and will release security patches for all critical vulnerabilities that we find and fix after 2034" (but we might privately not look that hard for them...)
Thing is, not every country in the world is trigger happy with lawsuits like in US, so there is a very high chance it goes nowhere, depending on the jurisdiction.
Likewise many legal insurances have footnotes regarding how far they are actually going to support you in a claim process.
I will support you for 10 years for this car I am selling you now.
(things change in-between for a year)
I will support you less than 5 years for this car, if you buy now.
---
Google didn't do anything wrong legally, because the good sold a year ago is not the same as the good you are selling at current point.
YOu can have different support schedule.
Yes, it's very shady shit, because some people would find Chrome book in blogs/review a year ago thinking, oh 10 years, only to find out now it's less than that.
Are the people who made the promise even still at Google?
It reminds me of those sketchy companies on Amazon promising "lifetime guarantee" on their products when they know already they're gonna close shop and reopen on a completely different brand the very next year.
The whole point of corporations is that the assets (and liabilities) created by the people working on behalf of the corporation outlive the term of their employment.
They don't (or at least shouldn't) get to keep the assets without also honouring the liabilities.
Entering into an arrangement with a big corp doesn't imply trust; it could be that there aren't other viable options as everything either dies or gets too big to fail...
Good thing I did not trust Google 10 years ago either.
What we see here is a strategic shift by Google; you need
to connect this here, with the prior Google strategy of no
longer open sourcing Android-related stuff or with a huge
delay. This is not an isolated thing - Google is planning
Evil again, as usual.
How? Corporate interests have fully captured the government and are systematically destroying all avenues by which they could ever be removed from power.
So it's as low as 8 years instead of 10 for models purchased in the last 2 years (2034 being the cutoff), with those few devices being covered by a separate commitment to transfer them to GoogleOS by 2034.
Pretty lame detail to be enraged about, but it is Google and this is HN. This aligns with Apple's timeline for killing Intel MacBook support after releasing Apple Silicon (2029 being the last commitment).
Discussed a lot here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49893653
Seems to be more reasonable than this title suggests?
Some comments: "So they have introduced a major change and said any older Chromebooks bought going forward will only get 8. So its not a retrospective reduction for existing customers." (Edit: actually I think this comment is wrong, if you bought a Chromebook 1 year ago, you'd only get 9 years of ChromeOS updates)
"From my understanding of the article, it sounds like ChromeOS support is getting pared back for those devices, but the devices themselves should still be supported, albeit via a (planned but not yet in existence) migration path to GooglebookOS."
Reasonable would have been to deprecate support in 10 years, not 8.
Saying "yeah, we promised you 10 years of support, but if you just bought yours the last two years of that will only be supported if you switch to a completely different OS. But happily some of our devices have a direct migration path (if that's not yours, deal with it). Better hope the features you need will be available in our new OS by then, because right now they are not" is a major rugpull and not reasonable at all
“Completely different OS” might not affect the user experience all that much, though, since these devices are for running Chrome and it will still run Chrome. (And be better at other things like running Android apps, presumably.)
We don’t have any details about what the upgrade path will look like and it probably hasn’t been implemented yet, so this is all speculative.
If they didn’t do an OS change, they could still evolve it a lot over 10 years. Chrome could evolve too. You’re trusting the vendor to not screw up your workflow either way.
These devices are usually bought on contract, with lots of lock in.
In particular, there are lots of schools getting screwed over financially. Maybe they’ll switch vendors, or use the money for education. Chromebook spending has a strong negative correlation with educational performance.
As a parent, I am supposed to have control over my kids’ personal information, but the schools firehose all the most sensitive kids’ info they have to an unlawful marketing firm that I do not trust. How do I opt out?
> Chromebook spending has a strong negative correlation with educational performance.
To be clear, this is only true because it’s been true for all screens.
Education contracts do not allow Google to use customer data for advertising.
Do you really think the engineering teams pour over those contracts when implementing new features?
Every single time? I sincerely doubt it.
Whatever logical business firewalls Google has between orgs for this kind of purpose seems pretty frail and thin from what I have seen reported.
But they still store the data.
Same goes for any third party service using Google Cloud. Google technically stores the data. They still can’t use it though.
“Can’t”
Correct, "can't". Are you suggesting they secretly violate the contract and use the data anyway?
After PRISM and Room 641A, anything is possible.
surely you can take two minutes out of your day and do basic websearches for privacy class actions and settlements
https://www.classaction.org/news/microsoft-collects-massive-...
https://www.k12dive.com/news/week-in-review-april-6-2026/816...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/12/...
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/journalists-sue-goo...
https://www.courthousenews.com/google-settles-class-action-o...
Yes
they do not. I don't work there anymore and don't have any particular goodwill towards the employer that laid me off last year but I can guarantee that any data related to the education sector is under extremely strict controls.
Remind me in 10 years when the story breaks.
Would anyone be shocked if they did? Tech firms seem to be immune from the law.
Legally they cannot, no. And sure, they could violate contracts and break data protection laws. But they’d be trading an enormous hit on their reputation, who knows how many hundreds of millions in educational contracts for, what, some basic demographic data on kids? Data they’ll almost certainly be able to get via other means once the kid becomes an adult?
I don’t like Google’s involvement in education. I don’t like Google much at all. But we should still be able to examine this stuff rationally without devolving into conspiracy theories that don’t make logical sense.
"reputation"
How do you propose they offer the contracted services like MDM, GSuite (email, Drive, etc) without storing any of the data?
Until they turn 16 or 18.
> How do I opt out?
Through your government. Maybe you could form a union strong enough but unlikely as you have more to lose than them, but both is a good idea.
> or use the money for education
Totally agree. Would love far fewer computers in schools.
Surely those contracts specify whatever the schools need.
Homeschool, vote for free school choice, vote for getting the subsidized funds to where you actually send your kids. Solves most problems related to bad school policies.
> vote for getting the subsidized funds to where you actually send your kids
…which is what happens today with public schools. Your case only makes sense if you’re sending your kid to private school and would like public funds to help pay for it.
School vouchers allow richer families to go to private school while preventing lower income folks from doing so, exacerbating problems with educational achievement.
School vouchers are the only fair way to do schooling. Rich people paying for more expensive things isn’t bad. They just shouldn’t be forced to pay for the more expensive thing that they use as well as the less expensive thing they don’t use
Surely that depends entirely on your definition of the word “fair”. Is it fair that a lower income child is deprived of an opportunity to improve their life through education because their parents can’t afford it?
Ultimately the debate here is “should richer people have to contribute back to society to help the lives of the poorer people”? Of course you can say no to that. But the majority of society doesn’t agree.
Don't worry, they can afford it. They're rich right?
I mean they may not use their local library or parks either, but they ain't getting a refund for that.
“School choice” is just marketing language to disguise “funneling general tax dollars into private schools so wealthy people don’t have to pay for the privilege.”
Wealthy people don't want more students going to their children's schools. School choice is about funneling public funds to evangelical (aka extremist) Christian churches.
No. It's about pushing decisions out to the edges and empowering parents (and students) to help run the school system. To frame it this way is to deny the powerful evolution brought about by real choice.
Isn't it retrospective to all customers who purchased in the last 2 years? They're not saying a Chromebook bought yesterday gets 10 years but one bought tomorrow only gets 8. They're saying they all end in 2034. If you bought one yesterday expecting 10 years of updates, you got screwed.
They're saying that you'll have to switch from ChromeOS to GoogleOS to keep getting updates for the full 10 years.
"All Chromebook platforms will get regular automatic updates for 10 years"
Are they going to make the switch automatic? It sure doesn't sound like the sort of transition that can be done automatically.
It would be relatively straightforward to do automatically. Both OS's use a Linux kernel and Linux filesystems. Whether they will or should is a different question, but technically it's straightforward.
Yeah unless Google is giving you a Googlebook for free I don't think there is any issue saying Google is breaking the promise
Yeah I think you're right.
Could you clarify what you mean with reasonable here?
My pet theory with this move from Chromebooks to Googlebooks is simply that Chromebooks have a major stink on their entire brand reputation, especially in the younger generation that went through school with terrible cheap (and likely used/damaged) Chromebooks being given to them for schoolwork.
I think if you say "Chromebook" around most 20-something and unders, they have an instant negative association with the word.
Unfortunately I don't think that's going to work.
Unless you are the most hardcore Google fan, I don't see why you want to spend $1k on a Googlebook instead of a Windows laptop or MacBook at the same price range.
Agree from a branding standpoint. Idk what a googlebook is or is going to be, but if it’s kneecapped the same way Chromebook, Android, and “iPad OS” are, it’s never going to be a real competitor.
And by this I mean being captive to App Store/Play Store, the weird “everything has to be inside Chrome” thing of Chromebook, the obtuse window-management contortions of iPad, etc. People expect to be able to install software of their choice on a real computer. I already have a smartphone. I don’t need a second giant one with a keyboard.
If they want to actually compete they should put their weight behind a real Linux distribution that works normally. Totally OK to add all the custom features they want, like running Android apps. But just don’t make it so weird.
(And no, developer-mode side loading doesn’t change any of that.)
I was a hardcore Google fan and that's what made me hate them. Trying to invest in their ecosystem is like being in an abusive relationship. They can't commit to anything, so any product you make part of your workflow will be inevitably ripped away from you with an assured promise that the new, blatantly worse thing replacing it is so much better.
All of their output is entirely dependent on internal product owners using Google products as stepping stones to ladder climb. Once they replaced a product, or did a giant 2.0 revamp, they move on and no one wants to maintain it.
> They can't commit to anything
Site updated fast https://killedbygoogle.com
> My pet theory with this move from Chromebooks to Googlebooks is simply that Chromebooks have a major stink on their entire brand reputation
I think you're right. Many of the students I've talked to have an immediate reaction of "slow, limited" when asked about a Chromebook. The early years of under-powered hardware and limited storage/memory really did them a disservice when it comes to brand
I guess it's true this could be their AOL disc.
The actual update:
> ChromeOS devices will continue to receive regular updates and security patches through mid-2034. For qualifying devices purchased today whose 10-year support lifecycle extends beyond 2034, Google is committed to supporting your transition to Googlebook OS, with many devices offering direct migration paths.
In other words, support will be offered until 2034. if you're buying a new Chromebook today and intend to keep it for longer than 8 years, you're doing so at your own risk.
Directly after the passage you quote:
> 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
So, they're changing the promise from now on, and not breaking it for past users. Doesn't sound like they're breaking their promise to me.
They are breaking the promise for people who bought a Chromebook between 2024 and 2026.
Internally, someone definitely pushed back against that (“it’s only two extra years!”). Would’ve loved to hear what they were told.
Now that I say that, breaking the promise by two years might’ve been a compromise. Maybe management wanted five.
The willful ignorance of the tech community is getting out of hand. This is the same thing as the "windows 10 is the last version of windows" discourse which stems from the absolutely abysmal state of tech journalism. You would think that by now that it would at least match financial journalism, but apparently we're fine settling for people who don't care about or understand what they are writing about.
This isn't an issue, the 10 years of support was promised for the hardware, not the software. They are fulfilling that promise by updating the devices to GooglebookOS.
Was “automatic“ a part of the promise? Now there’s some e.g. fixed income seniors sold on the inexpensive, hassle-free gear who have to deal with a lack of a “direct migration path“ in their later years?
Is Googlebook OS going to be "open source" like Chrome OS was (through Chromium)? Or is this also a forced transition from open -> closed? (that would make me far madder than simply forcing a migration).
I too would like to know this. I suspect there won't be an equivalent of ChromiumOS for Googlebook OS. Likely a combo of AOSP and proprietary closed source code.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49893653
I'm sure it was just a pinky promise with a million lines of small print saying they can actually do whatever they want regardless of what they said.
Also, in 2034 things will likely be radically different in computing. A local llm will likely either make such considerations entirely obsolete because support will be easy, or all current tech will be taken away from consumers anyway and everything will be much tighter controlled and monitored.
Curious that we have expectations for google to maintain such promises. Any other major companies with similar level of expectations?
>Stuff like this should not be legal.
Alternatively, if users want legally binding contracts they should not treat promises as such, and demand a contract instead.
Statements a manufacturer makes about their device before purchase are usually treated as legally binding. Saying you provide 10 years of updates is just like saying your charger delivers 60W.
You don't need a contract for that, if the statement is untrue the product is now defective. And if done on purpose this is usually considered fraud
They’ve already got the necessary lawyers to negotiate the class action settlement and to send checks for a portion of the purchase price to every class member, and they calculated that this would still save them money vs. whatever the alternative was.
For anyone currently owning a Chromebook and worrying about this:
https://docs.mrchromebox.tech
FWIW, my C13 Yoga (Morphius) runs full-fat Linux significantly better than it ever ran ChromeOS
A maybe not-so-silver lining is that the major consumers of Chromebooks (schools, mostly) probably won't see their hardware survive that long.
You’d be surprised I’m sure some schools did have it last that long
I'm on the school board for our school, and they last a few years if we're lucky. There are some that survive up to maybe 7, but they accrete so much damage by then. While I think it would have been ideal for G to keep it 10 years, I think in practice it won't matter for many people. Most students are awfully hard on those things after all.
This is the first time I've heard of this promise for 10 years of updates.
That seems quite impressive when compared against the 2-3 years of updates android phones historically got.
The only reason I'd consider buying a Chromebook is to install Linux on it... Same is true for Googlebook.
I even wouldn't. They're missing the meta key which is a pain, especially as an i3 user
Definitely only reasonable usecase...
Is anyone surprised at this? Abandoning products in an untimely fashion is their specialty. I've never bought a hardware product from them for that reason, except for a 2nd gen Chromecast which was something whose longevity I didn't care too much about.
Google: What are you gonna do? Sue us?
if you are a school or similar which ordered a large stack of them in the last two years then yes, especially if multiple such organizations join together on a legal case.
In the end "help with migration to" isn't the same supporting the existing product.
And if you advertised a product with 10 year support that _is_ legally binding (in the EU) and a clear cut case of you losing around 10-20% of the advertised value.
Given that legal costs might be to some degree covered by legal insurance and it being a clean cut case this is likely worth the money. But also a case where google can "just settle and not care" as in many cases schools did more things like forcing parents to buy chrome books then buying them themself, so it's unlikely to amass any relevant damage amount for Google.
More funny would be if the judge rules "10 years promised? You are cable of delivering 10 years?! You have to deliver it! And for all chrome books bought [8;10[ years before the deadline not just the suing party".
I don’t think school districts have the necessary thousands of highly-paid lawyers it would take to scare Google. Schools might join a class-action and get 20% credits for the 2 years of lost support, towards their next purchase, which Google will make sure is a little bit more expensive. The schools aren’t going to switch to Macs that cost literally 2x and are more fragile.
Besides, I’d be shocked if any Chromebook lasts 8 years in a school! Kids literally stick metal in the ports to fry them on purpose, and drop and throw them, etc.
Not saying Google is good, just that they don’t care about this and have no business need to care.
> In the end "help with migration to" isn't the same supporting the existing product.
I don't know that that's clearly true. Apple gives at least 5 to 7 years of updates past the last sale date for computers. (I don't know if this is an explicit promise or not; they have an explicit hardware support for 5 years and limited support for vintage [5-7 years old] equipment.)
I don't think I get to demand 5 years of support for specifically Sonoma or Tahoe on that equipment, but rather just N years of "some usable version of an OS and support to transition to it".
Replacing ChromeOS with GooglebookOS 8 years from now seems not that different from replacing Tahoe with Golden Gate.
The other alternative could be "we still support ChromeOS for 10 years, and will release security patches for all critical vulnerabilities that we find and fix after 2034" (but we might privately not look that hard for them...)
What a hilarious consumerism crock it is for Apple to call my 6 year old M1 Macs “vintage computers”! Like they belong in an antique shop.
In reality, even the crazy levels of frontend web bloat still haven’t caught up with the M1, at least with 16GB of RAM.
Has Apple ever promised how many years of updates they'll provide in a written form?
TIL they did for the iPhone 15 Pro:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/apple-commits-to-5-y...Thing is, not every country in the world is trigger happy with lawsuits like in US, so there is a very high chance it goes nowhere, depending on the jurisdiction.
Likewise many legal insurances have footnotes regarding how far they are actually going to support you in a claim process.
You can take mega corporations to small claims court and you're often not worth their time so they'll just settle.
I will support you for 10 years for this car I am selling you now.
(things change in-between for a year)
I will support you less than 5 years for this car, if you buy now.
---
Google didn't do anything wrong legally, because the good sold a year ago is not the same as the good you are selling at current point.
YOu can have different support schedule.
Yes, it's very shady shit, because some people would find Chrome book in blogs/review a year ago thinking, oh 10 years, only to find out now it's less than that.
Are the people who made the promise even still at Google?
It reminds me of those sketchy companies on Amazon promising "lifetime guarantee" on their products when they know already they're gonna close shop and reopen on a completely different brand the very next year.
If those people made the promise on behalf of Google while working there and being in a position to make such promises, it's Google's problem now.
(If they _weren't_ in said position, it's still Google's problem but with some caveats provided Google actually treats it as abuse of authority.)
The whole point of corporations is that the assets (and liabilities) created by the people working on behalf of the corporation outlive the term of their employment.
They don't (or at least shouldn't) get to keep the assets without also honouring the liabilities.
Recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49893653
Not sure why people still trust on big corps...
Entering into an arrangement with a big corp doesn't imply trust; it could be that there aren't other viable options as everything either dies or gets too big to fail...
Good thing I did not trust Google 10 years ago either.
What we see here is a strategic shift by Google; you need to connect this here, with the prior Google strategy of no longer open sourcing Android-related stuff or with a huge delay. This is not an isolated thing - Google is planning Evil again, as usual.
Stuff like this should not be legal?
Isn’t it illegal? It’s actual false advertising. You can sue them, it’s just no one has.
What exactly is illegal here? Providing an update to a supported OS in last two years?
I can't be the only one who thinks Googlebook is the least appealing name I may have ever heard for a hardware product.
It is okay, it will be discontinued shortly anyways.
The solution: legislate.
How? Corporate interests have fully captured the government and are systematically destroying all avenues by which they could ever be removed from power.
Exactly.
It's getting to be that nothing can be trusted. Even legislation, if it's not enforced.
So it's as low as 8 years instead of 10 for models purchased in the last 2 years (2034 being the cutoff), with those few devices being covered by a separate commitment to transfer them to GoogleOS by 2034.
Pretty lame detail to be enraged about, but it is Google and this is HN. This aligns with Apple's timeline for killing Intel MacBook support after releasing Apple Silicon (2029 being the last commitment).
I think you misunderstood the meaning of the word "promise".
Apple doesn't promise how many years of support any device gets.
Buying something that promises 10 years of updates and then having them turn around and say "lol just kidding you get 8" is pretty enraging.
Lining up with Apple is meaningless. Apple didn't promise updates for a longer period and then pull back.
Since when has Google ever been trustworthy?
This is just standard operating procedure. Remember --- "Don't be Evil".
Long term support is not the Google way
As a great philosopher once said "Don't be eval".. if you cant be compared, you cant be cornered..