Google pays OEMs to update Android devices

In other words, the amount of money an OEM makes from you using Google products on its device is correlated to how often it keeps that device up to date with security patches. This means Google intentionally strongarms OEMs to be better about updating phones, which is something we didn’t know before. We knew that Google mandates two years of updates for any Android phone and strongly encourages more extended support than that, but we didn’t realize there were financial incentives involved.