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With Google planning to combine Android and ChromeOS in the coming years, that raises questions about the future of ChromeOS. Testimony from Google's antitrust case obtained by The Verge now sheds more light on the timeline, and ChromeOS could be sticking around for another eight years.
Google is currently working on the combined Android-ChromeOS, known as Aluminum OS, but we're probably two years out from getting our hands on it. Court documents tip a testing period later this year and a full release by 2028.
ChromeOS devices, however, receive 10 years of updates. So, even when Aluminum launches, "it will not be compatible with all existing Chromebook hardware, requiring Google to maintain existing ChromeOS at least through 2033 to meet its ‘10 year support commitment’ to existing users," Google's lawyers told the court. "[The] timeline to phase out ChromeOS is 2034."
Google's head of ChromeOS, John Maletis, confirmed as much in a January interview with Chrome Unboxed. The commitment to 10 years of support is "a very, very, very important thing to us," he said.
ChromeOS launched on several low-cost Chromebooks in 2011. They found a real niche in education and some workplaces, but the OS never quite achieved the mainstream appeal of Windows and macOS. Still, the security implications of educational laptops all over the world losing security update support in the future are vast. As we've seen with Windows 10's loss of updates, it can leave users in the cold and vulnerable to exploitation.
As The Verge notes, all this came out as Google tried to convince that it should keep Chrome. It won that battle in September, with the judge saying that would be “incredibly messy and highly risky.”