It's not that simple: Google makes money off of other services, a fair fraction of which is from Android users. If an Android user has a phone which is >3 years old, they are still likely to be buying apps through the Android store, using the phone to access Google's paid services, or generating data which Google uses for their ad sales.

The underlying problem with Android is that they're competing with Apple, where all of those sources generate ongoing revenue from older hardware devices, but haven't found an effective way to share revenue between the different parties involved to pay for long-term support. Apple has no problem shipping iOS updates because they don't need you to buy a new phone nearly as much if you're subscribing to iCloud, using Apple Music, and buying from the App Store.

I don't think you have any basis for saying "was not a factor in deciding to buy the phone." Do you really think people buying the Pixel 3 knew it would only be supported for 3 years? Also, Google would not lose money if they supported the phone longer at a few pennies per phone. The Pixel phones (and others) are advertising and data delivery devices. Google makes money every time you use them.

So you don't think I have "any basis" for saying that was not a factor in deciding to buy a phone? Do you know people? Most don't pay much attention things of this nature, the people on this board are not even close to the norm. And the pixel has been a sales success since it's introduction. To me, your argument amounts to "not ah!".

Also, where did you get the "few pennies per phone" number? If that is accurate, what do you attribute google's decision to not spend basically nothing for longer updates from Qualcom?

Thanks for your comment. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. From my own (purely anecdotal) experience, if most people had been told that their phone would be unsupported after 3 years they would have considered that strongly in their purchase. Since my experience is anecdotal it proves nothing, but my major disagreement is that you point to sales numbers as evidence that people don't care about support.

>feature that obvious(based on sells numbers) was not a factor in deciding to buy the phone or not,

I don't think those customers were informed of the limited support prior to the sale, so those sales numbers are not meaningful in this context. Also, many companies offer longer support. Google is selling Pixel as a premium phone so (in my opinion) offering only 3 years of support is a major abuse of the customer relationship.

As far as pennies per phone, I was referring to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30075970