“Finally.” That was my first reaction when I heard Google would combine Android and ChromeOS into a single operating system. Android has long struggled on tablets, and ChromeOS always felt like too much of a stripped-down alternative to tempt me away from Windows and Mac. So last week, it was exciting to see a leaked first glimpse at Google’s Aluminium OS, and hear it may already be slated for an Intel Panther Lake laptop dubbed “Ruby” and a “Sapphire” high-end tablet.

But the future may not be coming as fast as you’d think, and it might be messy when it gets here. According to previously unreported court documents in the Google search antitrust case, Aluminium won’t see a full release until 2028.

Though Google’s head of Android, Sameer Samat, said last September that the combination of Android and Chrome is “something we’re super excited about for next year” — meaning 2026 — the documents suggest Aluminium won’t be ready to change the laptop world quite that soon.

Image: US v. Google (2020)

In a transcript obtained by The Verge from August 2025, Samat said that Google merely hopes to launch Aluminium in 2026 — “We’re working hard on it,” he said — and Google’s own lawyers seem less sure. In documents Google filed with the court, the new operating system’s “fastest path” to market involves offering it to “commercial trusted testers” in late 2026 before a full release in 2028. And while Chromebooks currently dominate in schools, the document suggests that “enterprise and education sectors” in particular will get Aluminium in 2028, not 2026.

“Even when the new OS that runs Chromebooks becomes available, it will not be compatible with all existing Chromebook hardware, requiring Google to maintain existing ChromeOS at least through 2033 to meet its ‘10 year support commitment’ to existing users,” Google’s lawyers added.

We already know ChromeOS won’t vanish from laptops right away. Google’s head of ChromeOS, John Maletis, confirmed as much to Chrome Unboxed earlier this month, adding that Google will honor its promise to give ChromeOS devices 10 years of automatic updates. But that means those devices may get those updates instead of an upgrade to Aluminium. Maletis told Chrome Unboxed:

In terms of devices being able to migrate over to the new stack, not all devices will be able to just because there are technical specifications…But a lot of the newer devices, we will be working on an ability for customers to migrate over.

And here’s something that wasn’t previously reported: Google plans to kill off ChromeOS as soon as it can while meeting its 10-year support obligation for devices that won’t get Aluminium. The “timeline to phase out ChromeOS is 2034,” court documents reveal, adding that Google can’t do it any earlier because “jurisdictions have various rules for how long a device must be supported.”

Why did Google lawyers admit all these things in court? At the time, those attorneys were trying to use these facts to argue that the US should not and cannot force Google to sell off Chrome after abusing its monopoly power over search. You can even see Google’s attorney leading the judge in that direction in one of my screenshots above: “So would divesting Chrome make it more difficult to support the ChromeOS software on the older computers?”

Last September, in a controversial and widely reported decision, Judge Amit Mehta allowed Google to keep Chrome. What wasn’t so widely reported: Judge Mehta also agreed that he won’t ban Google from making self-preferencing deals with carriers and manufacturers to prioritize Google apps on their Aluminium OS devices.

While Mehta’s final judgment bans deals that explicitly say things like “Motorola can’t put Google apps on their Android phones unless the phones default to Google Search” or “Apple can’t set their default AI app to ChatGPT if they want a share of Google search revenue on the iPhone,” Mehta has exempted ChromeOS and Aluminium from that ban. According to the final judgment, devices “on which the ChromeOS operating system or a successor to the ChromeOS operating system is installed” simply don’t count there.

In a December 2025 opinion, the judge explained in part that’s because “Chrome is a necessary component of a ChromeOS device.” Perhaps that’s fair, and perhaps Chrome will be necessary for Aluminium as well. But perhaps it will only be necessary because Google designs it that way, giving the Chrome browser and Google apps special privileges that could possibly be delegated to other browsers and companies as well.

If Aluminium turns out to be largely Android for PCs, a version that just so happens to lock users into Google’s browser and Google’s app store and APIs, it might fly in the face of the world’s attempts to curb Google’s monopoly power.

The tipster who pointed us to these documents wonders if, perhaps, Google may even be trying to shield Aluminium from repercussions in Epic Games v. Google, too — the case that may crack open the Google Play store to competition.

While Judge James Donato’s original permanent injunction in Epic v. Google applies to Google’s dealings around the Play Store in general, presumably even if it’s installed on laptops, desktops, or any other kind of Android-based device, Google and Epic’s proposed settlement tweaks the injunction to only apply to smartphones and tablets that specifically run “the Android operating system.” That could exclude Aluminium as well as laptops and desktops in general, if approved.

Google declined our request to fact-check the Project Aluminium timeline and other statements and documents from the court.

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• Sean Hollister