Google denies apparent withdrawal of Android One 2-year update pledge

Google's Android One-branded phones are gaining popularity in many countries, the United States included. This is mainly because One offers devices with 'vanilla' software for decent prices. Furthermore, they also often arrive with up-to-date versions of Android (e.g. Oreo 8.1 to Pie 9.0), and are associated with a promise of 2 years' worth of timely updates. This circumvents the normal constraints placed on update times through the need of individual OEMs to adapt their own custom skins to the latest versions of the OS.

A Reddit user recently pointed out that Google had removed the text referring to this 2-year pledge from its website for Android One. This led to worries that the company was backing away from its explicit promise to support devices sold under this program for that length of time. India Today online even picked up this story, while also incorporating speculation that the OEMs who make Android One devices were finding the update structure unfeasible, and would prefer to market new devices rather than provide new updates. 

However, Google subsequently responded to this article with the following statement: "We confirm that our promise to provide 2 years of updates on Android One devices still stands and our website design does not impact the promise of this program". Therefore, it seems that the deletion of the update-specific text is not as significant as some may have thought. It is also true that the Android One landing page appears to have been re-designed recently. Then again, the written guarantee of updates has not been restored to it.

Source(s)