I am still surprised Google gets almost no flack for this. Chromebooks are particularly bad offenders. They're basically disposable laptops with an incredibly short lifecycle, where even browser security updates end when Google decides a laptop has left support. It's ironic Chrome is supported many years longer on any given Windows PC than any given Chromebook.
Google loves claiming to be environmentally friendly, but disposable computing is practically their default mode now.
Not sure what's "bad" about Chromebooks, seeing as you can unlock them and install standard firmware. Then your only obstacle to using them as you would any other laptop is OEM hardware that's sometimes not supported by the mainline kernel, and a mildly non-standard keyboard. Android is a lot worse than that, many devices are not even OEM unlockable in the first place.
They might be unlockable, but at that point they're disposable to a business or school environment.
A PC shipped with Windows 7 in 2009 can run Windows 10 for free and the latest release of Chrome, supported officially by Google. If you upgraded from XP or Vista, many of those PCs can still run current Chrome just fine. The max life of a Chromebook as a Chromebook is like six years.
You would unlock them after they've reached EOL w/ their supported OS, for the sake of resale value and thus reuse. It's not much of course, but it's better than a lot of mobile hardware.
Google loves claiming to be environmentally friendly, but disposable computing is practically their default mode now.