Rise of the Googlebook means ChromeOS users get eight years' support, not a decade

Googlebooks are the big G’s replacement for Chromebooks, the web-centric computers it launched in 2011 and which run ChromeOS. Chromebooks have won plenty of admirers in the education sector, especially schools which see them as a fine way to get decent and well-priced computers into kids’ hands without having to take on the burden of managing a full OS.

The newer Googlebook range uses more powerful processors than their predecessors, plus a new OS called Googlebook OS that bakes in Google’s Gemini AI – a product the Chocolate Factory is very keen to see succeed as the great AI land grab continues.

Google has so far launched Googlebooks only for consumers. None of the web giant’s five current Googlebook hardware partners designed their first models for the education market or other fleet buyers.

I do not know how to express how much I hate every sentence of those three paragraphs, what an enshitacoaster of a ride.

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
    192·
    1 month ago

    This article is a ragebait nothing-burger.

    Google isn’t going back on its word and ending support early for any device anyone has already bought, its saying if you buy one today you’ll only get 8 years for support from today.

    The author of the article even knows this is ragebait by saving this obvious conclusion for the penultimate sentence in the article:

    While Google has unilaterally changed a policy, it’s hard to imagine many Chromebooks currently in service or acquired in the next year or two will still be in service come 2034. So the shorter support period is largely moot.

    Mr Article Author, I don’t fault you for how you wrote it. We all have to make a living and if you’d avoided the ragebait lede folks would have likely ignored the article.

  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
    81·
    1 month ago

    Oftentimes I think people getting upset about Google abandoning a project is overreacting, but it is a bit fucked up that they had a decent thing and it was used heavily in schools… But they went nah, like most everything else, let’s cancel this so we can put AI even more at the forefront.