[kbenson]

While Google hasn't been the best at supporting products (and support in general), I always find statements like this with sites like that distasteful, as they leave out a lot of context that mitigates how bad it is. Sure, Google is EOLing Hangouts, but they provide a replacement. Sure, they've turned down a lot of products (like reader), but many (possibly most of the very large number presented on that site) were beta products.

I clearly remember telling people that asked me about whether they should worry about it saying beta on some Google product I had recommended that Google always leaves stuff in beta for years and not to worry. Well, now we all know better. I'm not happy about it, but I don't feel like I can blame them for that either. They were pretty up-front about services being beta in most cases.

[ghaff]

And, as far as Chrome OS specifically is concerned...Yes, I'd be more than annoyed if they pulled support for my new PixelBook in anything less than a reasonable support window.

But my use of Chrome OS creates far less lock-in for me than most products. Other than my hardware investment--which I don't expect to last forever--I could basically switch to anything else with a browser next week basically without skipping a beat.

[Ygg2]

Here is the thing. Google has one primary source of revenue. Ad tech. If Ad tech fails, all their other sources of revenue won't be able to pay for their other services, so the fear they'll cut them is warranted.

Disclaimer I use Google services, but I'm definitely looking for alternatives.

[ac29]

> Here is the thing. Google has one primary source of revenue. Ad tech.

This is changing though - the most recent quarterly report has YTD ad revenues as 84% of overall revenues, with the corresponding previous year's period at 86%. The non-ad revenues are in the tens of billions of dollars - hardly nothing.

https://abc.xyz/investor/

[andrewmutz]

If your other preferred client is the Mac, you have the same challenge with Apple. Their entire mac product line is only 10% of their revenue.

[awinder]

Do google developers get issued chromebooks these days? Either way, there’s a large scale difference in the amount of money (because Apple makes more money than google in addition to 10% being 4x the 2.5% of revenue google is devoting to chromebooks). On top of that, Mac revenue is eaten into by iOS device revenue, which is a pretty close product category. Much closer than ads, at least.

[mattzito]

Yes, they do. The default machine you get is a pixelbook, that’s true of basically everyone at Google. You can request a Mac, which is what I did, but I later also got a pixelbook and found that I quite like it.

Literally the only thing keeping me from using it as my primary work machine is that it only supports one chrome browser profile per login, so I can’t be logged into my work account at an OS level and my work and personal accounts at the chrome level. But I went and paid out of pocket for a pixelbook for home because I thought it was a great all around home laptop.

(Disclaimer: I work at google, but not on chromeos or hardware, this is just my personal experience )

[ojn]

Did they remove multi profile login?!

You used to be able to login with several accounts and switch between them similar to virtual desktops.

[enachb]

You can still switch between accounts on ChromeOS. I do this on my Google issued Pixelbook daily.

Once you're signed into the other account, you can switch quite easily with <CTRL> + ,

[awinder]

Very neat, thanks for the insights!

[afshin]

It isn't the same challenge because Apple doesn't sell Macs at a loss.

[d1zzy]

Are you saying that Google sells Chrome OS at a loss?

[m-p-3]

They do make a substantial amount of money with G Suite subscriptions, and they're bound to SLAs.

[lazylizard]

I on the other hand avoid vendor lockin like the plague and self host open source applications where i can.

But as long as you can install another linux on a chromebook(i once bought a refurbished x131e for less than $100,upped the ram to 8gb, put a seagate sshd hybrid in it and dual booted windows10 + ubuntu on it. Its just like any other laptop except no function keys) there's really no issue here..

[StudentStuff]

Google EOLed Chromebooks that were sold 3 years ago, they do not give a crap about maintaining a stable ecosystem.

These 3 year old Chromebooks don't even get Chrome security patches, you would literally be better off with any other laptop when it comes to security.

[gowld]

Beta means prerelease testing, not EOL.

[kbenson]

Beta means not meant for general use/production, and all that implies about people being upset about beta products being diacontinued.

I was covering two distinct cases, one where Google discontinues a production product, and generally they have a different product to migrate to, and one where Google discontinues a beta peoduct, where it seems they usually don't care if you were reliant on it.

Beta does mean prerelease testing, and while it implies they are moving towards a release, there's no guarantee implied or otherwise that a release is forthcoming.

[gowld]

And non beta is no guarantee that a product won't be discontinued.