Google extends the life of over 100 Chromebooks w/ extra year of software support

Ben Schoon | Nov 5 2019 - 7:51 am PT

Every Chromebook that’s ever hit the market has an “end-of-life” date built in, meaning that once that date has been hit, updates will no longer hit the machine. It’s a definite downside, but Google has just extended an olive branch to nearly every Chromebook by offering another year of software support.

There’s a support page from Google that lists out the EOL dates for every single Chromebook, and for quite a few, those dates were coming up relatively quickly. Earlier this year, Google gave several of Lenovo’s Chromebooks including the popular C330 some extra time and that’s been extended to many other models.

This week, Google updated that support page to revise the EOL dates of a whopping 135 different Chromebooks from various manufacturers. Android Police has a great side-by-side comparison of how each Chromebook’s date was changed, but almost every model was given an extension of almost exactly a year. Some, though, only added a few months while a couple added up to two years.

Notably, this includes some of Google’s own Chromebook models, too. The 2015 Chromebook Pixel will now get updates through June 2021, while the short-lived Pixel Slate will get another two years of support through June 2026. We’re betting that one probably has something to do with the Pixelbook Go and its nearly identical internals.

It’s not clear why Google has suddenly decided to start giving all these Chromebooks a new lease on life with extended software support, but it’s certainly not something to complain about. Hopefully, Google will eventually just give these machines better support indefinitely.