I agree with other comments on here that manufacturers are probably more to blame than Google, as they are the ones that are responsible for pushing updates to the end users. The 3rd party ROM community often shows that older handsets are quite capable of running the newer versions of Android but the manufacturers have no incentive to spend the time making the OS updates for older devices as they aren’t making money from doing that, and would rather you spend money on a new phone instead.
Google could do more though by making the Android one scheme mandatory for all manufactures who want to get their devices Google certified and use the Gapps suite on their devices. This would ensure that every Android device was guaranteed to get 3 years worth of security updates before it went out of support. And at that point I think the boot loaders for the phone should be able to be unlocked so the community can carry on supporting it past EOL.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
