Do people have any faith in the these sorts of notices, when nothing ever produced by the company has yet been supported that long?
Google has supported all of its Nexus/Pixel devices for as long as they have claimed to in the past.
The difference now is that the claimed period is longer than before.
The claims form part of the advertising and sales material for the product - this is legally binding in many countries.
Absolutely. If they decided to make this announcement, I have faith that they'll stick with it. Whether Pixel 9, 10, 11 etc. will have similar pledges, we'll have to wait and see.
Why just announce it for new devices, why not announce existing devices will also get updates
Says someone with a perfectly good Pixel 4a that isn’t guaranteed updated after it’s three years old (which happened in Aug ‘23)
They're still honoring it - they're just not continuing the program after all current subscriptions expire. People who paid for it are still getting what they paid for through the end of their subscription, although because the program is not continuing, your subscription will end at the end of two years. In other words, the Pixel Pass was more or less equivalent to Google's existing 0% APR financing (which is still offered, including on the Pixel 8!). The only difference is that the Pixel Pass autorenewed at the end of 24 months, whereas otherwise you have to manually reorder the next phone with the financing offer[0].
That's different from not delivering the product/service that customers have paid for.
The promise of 7 years of updates is legally binding. If Google promises 7 years of updates, and then doesn't deliver those, that will be a violation of both state and federal law (California is now requiring 7 years of updates, and it is additionally a violation of federal law to advertise a product with a service, sell that product, and then fail to deliver that service).
[0] The 0% APR financing offer is actually now slightly better than the Pixel Pass, because on the Pixel 8 it's now amortized over 3 years instead of two (which is new - previously it was amortized over 2 years).
I bought a Pixel 5 less than 2.5 years ago, I didn't even consider the possibility that it could be EOL so early so I never sought out that page. I've never had another phone or laptop last such a short time.
Edit: Remember, we are only a few iterations in on the Tensor.
When a chip is supplied by a vendor and needs to be supported in the kernel, the whole thing can be EoLed by one stubborn vendor. That's one of the promises of Fuchsia - decoupling hardware support from the rest of the system, so you can keep everything else up-to-date even if Qualcomm tells you to kick rocks.
But that phone would've been paid for by your payments for months 25-48 so that seems fair.
It is suggestive of Google's usual approach to supporting their projects though. I'll believe seven years of updates when I see it.
However, Google has repeatedly demonstrated that they'll sell you something only to kill it off very quickly. They're great at innovating cool new ideas and absolutely terrible at getting anyone to maintain those ideas. And you can see that based on their hiring. They want the best of the best, people who want to do nothing but blaze new trails. Maintenance? Techdebt? No... not for these esteemed engineers. Which leaves... basically no one at Google to mop up after.
Google itself used to offer 3 years of support. The last 2 generations of Pixels have 5 years. This new phone is 7 years, which is in line with Apple's 6-7 years.
Parts of the system are also kept up-to-date via the app store. Apple released a system update not long ago for older iPhones just to fix a WebKit exploit... Google would release that as an app update, you wouldn't even have to restart the phone. Any Android running a 7 year old OS (Android 7) is still running the latest version of Chrome. On newer Android versions, parts of the system - from the media engine to the bluetooth stack - can also be updated via the store.
Are Android updates messier than iOS? Yes they are. But a lot of what's considered to be "system updates" on iOS are just app/module updates on Android. They happen in the background are keep on going for years after you get a full system update. They don't get any headlines though.
With this said, updates on Android are different from iOS updates. Things like the browser, camera, gallery, etc, are updated via the app store, so your Pixel 5 still runs the latest Chrome and will continue to do so for years. They can also update system components (media engine, bluetooth, etc) via Play Store updates. Many new features (covid app support, earthquake alerts, etc) are backported via the Play services. On iOS all this requires a system update, on Android it doesn't.
This new Pixel 8 has 7 years of support, which is in line with the 6 or 7 years iPhones get. At least from now on Pixels should be as good as iPhones.