Google’s Aluminium OS faces a long, fragmented road to release

The transition process is set to be uneven. While Google’s head of Android, Sameer Samat, expressed optimism for a 2026 debut, internal legal filings indicate a more conservative approach. The fastest path to market involves limited testing in late 2026, with a full-scale rollout for enterprise and education sectors delayed until 2028. Furthermore, existing hardware will not support the new stack universally. Google remains committed to its ten-year update cycle for current Chromebooks, meaning many devices will continue running legacy ChromeOS until as late as 2034 rather than transitioning to the new platform.

Technical constraints are only half the battle. Legal maneuvering in the US v. Google antitrust case has provided a rare look at how the company intends to position Aluminium to avoid regulatory oversight. Judge Amit Mehta’s final judgment includes exemptions for ChromeOS and its successors, effectively shielding Aluminium from bans on self-preferencing deals that apply to standard Android devices. This regulatory carve-out could allow Google to maintain deep-seated integration of its browser and apps as first-class citizens, potentially complicating efforts by regulators and rivals like Epic Games to curb the company’s market dominance. Google declined to verify the specific timeline or the implications of these court documents.