Chromebooks will get 10 years of automatic updates

This is a big victory for the parents, teachers, and students who wrote to Google asking them to make this change. https://pirg.org/articles/why-google-announced-chromebooks-w...

Google and other tech companies should continue to find ways to stop the disposability treadmill that pressures us to replace our phones and laptops in favor of newer models. With e-waste the fastest growing waste-stream in the U.S., it’s not sustainable to consume technology at this rate. This is a meaningful step toward a tech industry making products designed to last.

>Starting in 2024, if you have Chromebooks that were released from 2021 onwards, you’ll automatically get 10 years of updates.

Nice of them to cover a few from the last few years as well. From a school standpoint, this is a big win. I doubt many chromebooks in active use by students would even last 10 years.

I've seen a few folks here doubting that Google would actually follow through with this (which I think is a valid concern with their track record), but I'm more curious about if the hardware would hold up to 10 years of updates.

Granted, not all current Chromebooks are as low-specced as they used to be, but with the way the modern web has been gobbling up system resources the last few years I can't imagine a Chromebook actually being usable through an entire decade of bloat (whether it's technically supported via updates or not).

I'm kind of amazed at the Chromebook I got for $250. I can do pretty much everything I need with it, it has good battery life. I can even do some coding with it. I bought it as a stopgap when the Dell I ran Ubuntu on died, but since I don't do a lot of coding these days outside of work, haven't replaced the Dell yet.

I have serious doubts about how comprehensive this support will actually be, especially regarding firmware updates and non-Google vendor commitment.

There is a wide variety of Chromebook hardware manufacturers, and most of them don't have a good track record of providing firmware upgrades for long. Google can keep ChromeOS updated on these devices, just like Microsoft can keep pushing Windows updates, but are the manufacturers going to provide firmware updates for 10 years? Are Intel or Mediatek going to be providing 10 years of microcode updates for the CPUs used on these devices? It doesn't make sense to me that these companies are suddenly going to invest a lot of money just to support these cheap devices that probably don't make a lot of profit, when they have never given a similar level of support to their flagship products.

I think this 10 year support window will not be full device support, just a commitment to providing OS updates that don't break stuff.

I'm still a bit salty that Google discontinued the Pixelbook and shut down the team responsible for it. I could easily see that machine becoming the perfect developer laptop with its Linux container support, and the high-end version had pretty good specs.

I would love a high end Chromebook, but sadly haven't found anything that is even close to where the Pixelbook was.

Now we just need every model to come with its expiry date clearly labelled.

Is there anything, maybe a legal agreement, that can stop google from breaking this promise in three years?

They are not famous for longterm project management.

I have a Gen 1 chromecast, which was supposedly still supported till April.

I can tell you, that for the last~3 years of its life, it was pretty much useless. About half of youtube videos would stutter so badly it was unusable (ie. half the time they'd be paused).

Third party apps were also about only about half functional - the loading time of the app frequently meant there was a comms timeout before the app had loaded.

And the chromecast itself couldn't stay connected to any wifi network for more than about 20 mins - which obviously isn't great for something designed for TV watching.

Basically - support is useless unless they actually put enough effort in to make sure the product remains usable.

They should also guarantee that OEMs will not leave the Chromebook bootloader locked once those 10 years of automatic updates are over and they should release the source code for their drivers. My android is useless after 3 years because google doesn't do what microsoft does with x86 OEMs.

Can folks help me a little here, please. Sure this is an awesome announcement. I now am considering to buy a ChromeBook even more seriously.

My reluctance is, can Google, tomorrow (before 10 years) feel that, ahh no we are bored of this so let's not do it. Google has a history of introducing stuff that people start to rely on and then kill it; I still wish Inbox had not been killed by Google.

I'm just in the middle of installing Linux Mint on my 2017 Asus c202 because the updates stopped this summer. The c202 is still a fine machine for my uses. I've take taken the screw out of the mother board now and just reading up on how to install Linux but now ... maybe I'll wait and see if fresh updates restart coming my way.

I have a samsung chromebook plus 32 bit ARM based and now it has plastered on the screen a message that says: "Security Updates Ended. Update your device" The message cannot be removed. If I click on it, opens chrome and sends me to the Google store (effing commercial).

The laptop runs like a charm (I replaced the battery) with termux installed. It has a great touch interface with a stylus that will break If I try to install other OS on it.

Google way to obsolete this things starts looking a lot like Apple. They want to kill their old devices with a thousand little cuts.

I just want to remove the goddam message and for Google to leave me alone. Good luck with that.

Longer support is good. I hope schools don't see that 10 years of support as meaning that the Chromebooks they buy will have 10 years of useful life. My daughter has a 3-year old Chromebook issued by her high school that struggles to load web pages.

This is fantastic! I had kind of stopped buying Chromebooks because of how short the supported life was, even though they were great for my needs and very affordable. I'll be buying Chromebooks again.

With Pixel phones getting 5 years, and Chromebooks getting 10, I'm feeling good again about recommending them to people, particularly since they are unlockable so you can install alternative ROMs to get more life. I'd really love to see them match Apple by doing at least 7 years for Pixel phones, but I'm feeling really good about the direction we're going!

We are yet to see for how long Apple is going to support their Apple Silicon machines, but this definitely sets a precedent for Apple. It would be really shameful if they go the iPhone route and cut support after 6 years of updates.

On the other hand, Apple is still selling the iMac with a 2020 chipset, so we could say that they look like they are committed to providing updates. I hope they wouldn't just cut off support in 3 years time.

We need to go back to making everything available offline, and use local compute power. Chromebooks and the ChromeOS are useless really in offline mode unless you are technical expert. The Linux container and Android support is abysmal unless you have the fastest and most powerful chromebook. At which point you should just get a Windows machine with WSL and WSA, or a Macbook.

Nice ! We were at a ridiculous situation where Google had released ChromeOS Flex, which would allow installing the latest OS on devices older that many Chromebooks that went out of support (and it was marketed as such). I joked that they should release ChromeOS Flex for out of support Chromebooks, but official support is much better of course.

10 years is a long time. I wonder how they are doing the accounting on this commitment or if the only cost is marketing.

Serious question:

Is the chromebook division run by an entire different company? They are great exactly where Google has otherwise failed.

Cool, can we get the same for Pixel4+?

Ta.

My chromebook simply stopped playing videos of any sort a couple months ago. I followed all the procedures google provided, nothing worked. Everything else works fine.

I figured it was some automatic update that did it.

>All Chromebook platforms will get regular automatic updates for 10 years — more than any other operating system commits to today.

I suppose Microsoft technically doesn't offer 10 years of support with Windows 11, but it has done with Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8/8.1, and 10.

There's also a footnote on the Google article:

>A small selection of device platforms may not receive the full 10 years of automatic updates, and some features and services may not be supported. See our Help Center for details.

I wonder what changed that allowed them to have a better update policy. AFAIK the time horizon was capped because SOC vendors fail to update drivers for legacy products.

It is interesting to see a very specific number 2021 here...Wonder why they picked that year as a cutoff? Did they have any (relatively) recent technology implemented around that time to make the update easier and future proof?

I know that this kind of long commitment is painful for platforms because third parties won't do a shit for old machines and platforms usually don't have a good way to enforce them to update their problematic firmware or whatever.

10 years of updates, sure. But will 10 year old hardware actually be usable on the web? Especially Chromebook hardware that tends to be low end.

This does more for the environment than renewables. Kudos

Hmm, I wonder if they will extend the update time frame for their Pixel Phones? The #a series only get 3 years of updates, which is way too short.

This is a big relief. I have a Samsung Chromebook Plus that still works fine and I like the form factor. I recently got notified that ChromeOS updates were EOL, so I reformatted it with PostmarketOS, an Alpine Linux derivative. Installing was easy, and I want to like it, but it almost works. It has no sound, won't play videos, and the touchscreen behavior is janky.

how is Google doing this ? i mean as opposed to Apple, ChromeOS has to support a much wider variety of chipsets/motherboards/wifi drivers, etc.

how is Google guaranteeing 10 years of updates on Linux while supporting newer and newer models every year.

In 10 years - Google's supported chromebook devices would exponentially blow up (versus Apple).

How are they pulling this off ?

A serious question, what do people do with Chromebooks? Especially people who use their own money to get one, instead of getting one free from school.

A decent Chromebook seems to be around 1000€, with prices going up to 2000€. You can get an _actual_ laptop with that. Why get a glorified hardware browser?

I have a chromebook from 5+ years ago other than the 4gb of ram I don't see why Google couldn't just keep updates going forever?

Surly chromeOS isn't so "heavy" now that it cannot run on a 3.5gz dual core and 4gb of ram?

Latest of any major distribution still runs pretty well.

Slight tangent but why do school students need laptops? What's wrong with pen and paper and a scientific calculator? Every thing taught in school can be taught using pen and paper. Introducing expensive unreliable (compared to pen and paper) tools is unnecessary.

But don't expect them to check whether the Chromebooks are still useful after an update. E.g., the original Lenovo duet turned into an oversized paperweight after one of their later updates.

That's pretty good. Are they also able to run popular Linux distros?

I would never use a Chromebook, but this is extremely appealing either way. I wonder if their other hardware and operating systems will receive this kind of support eventually.

... And after 10 years, Google will intentionally structure their updates to force-sunset hardware, even if the hardware is still going strong.

The question is, is this statement binding for 10 years, or can they "kill" it within a couple years?

Retroactive to devices released in 2021.