I think it's "quiet" in the sense that they don't send a push notification to affected phones when they're about to go EOL, so you don't know it happens unless you go out of your way to check.

Or put the EOL in the final OS update for that phone, with a permanent status icon / notification warning that the device is EOL. It's not like they decide at their morning stand-up, "hey, Pixel 2 has been out for a while; anyone object to killing it off today?" There's plenty of time to roll that sort of thing out, however it works under the hood.

I guess I haven't had any time to actively care about this stuff for the last 2.5 years (new parent). So when my phone tells me "Your device is up to date" with the reality in small text further down the page, apparently I am able to miss this.

Sure, I have to take some responsibility for poor digital hygiene or whatever, but I don't think that negates Google's awful management of this. I shouldn't _have_ to be vigilant/proactive to stay safe in something as basic as this.

Aside: Google spams me with all kinds of noise in notifications these days; couldn't they at very least put something in there saying "by the way, your device is now EOL; buy a new one"? Ockham's razor suggests to me that a _lot_ of people are running unsupported devices still, and Google doesn't want the collective backlash of putting that uncomfortable reality in people's faces.