Thread

Google breaks promise to provide 10 years of updates to Chromebooks

355 points · 156 comments · speckx

jezzamon · 1790860299 · focus · HN ↗
Discussed a lot here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49893653">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."
1. wat10000 · 1790861354 · focus · HN ↗
  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.
  1. bryanlarsen · 1790861472 · focus · HN ↗
    They're saying that you'll have to switch from ChromeOS to GoogleOS to keep getting updates for the full 10 years.
    wat10000 · 1790861687 · focus · HN ↗
    "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.
    fg137 · 1790863358 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah unless Google is giving you a Googlebook for free I don't think there is any issue saying Google is breaking the promise
    bryanlarsen · 1790866767 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    wat10000 · 1790872940 · focus · HN ↗
    And what do you think the probability is that Google makes it a completely seamless update? I'd put it at well under 1% personally.
    Zigurd · 1790870920 · focus · HN ↗
    That's why this branding decision is a mess: Googlebooks are meant to be a good Gemini experience, and probably have some minimum requirements for local inference. The OS for these machines is all one probably very messy derivative of the same code base, where an android runtime is centrally important to having apps on that platform. But now the imperative is to center the AI experience, whether or not branding and product formulation can be made understandable.

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