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Chromebooks are supported for 6-7 years. But if you buy a model that's already several years old it will have less support remaining.

Google doesn't even plan to be running the same OS kernel in a few years, let alone on the same last-gen-security hardware.

Their desire to be known for cutting-edge hardware security + performance of any ring they happen to be boxing in appears to trump our desire for cheap hardware with long support guarantees.

A more realistic answer is that the cost of maintaining the OS is probably high and the benefits of doing so are low with no direct revenue. Ideally devices maintenance guarantees would be factored into procurement decisions and skew the trade-off in the right way.

Ideally, there would be consumer or environmental protection laws to make sure that selling landfill androids/tablets was no longer profitable.

For instance, manufacturers need to support their devices for at least 8 years from date of sale, or pay $100 per device-year of missed support.

So, there would be a $700 tax on devices that are supported for one year.

That's a good idea, although the numbers could use some tweaking.

To help ensure future hardware sales.