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App Store has been a >$1B business for at least a decade.

If it's just a question of revenue, Google can certainly afford to update it's Pixel devices for more than three years. Heck, they can afford to offer customer service and technical support hotlines the way Apple does as well.

However, the claim made was that Apple only started offering a longer update period after they started calling out service growth. This simply isn't true.

They can except... They don't control the SoC! Qualcomm decides if a SoC gets to boot a newer Android or not. And it’s in Qualcomm’s interest to sell more chips, since they get no revenues post sales; only maintenance costs.

That claim doesn't hold water. If people doing unpaid community support can produce custom ROMs for older devices that are no longer supported, Google can support older devices too.

Not to mention the ability of any company to make demands of their suppliers. If Google can demand device makers not use a fork of Android, they can demand suppliers offer support for their products.

Google simply doesn't care, because the customers they care about are the advertisers, not device purchasers.

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