In practice, if there has been some kind internal restructuring, the infrastructure required to keep those previous promises probably isn't there anymore. Try contacting Google support, I guess.
Also, unless such promises were put on paper in some kind of contract AND without the ever present "We reserve the right to change the terms of this agreement partially or fully in the future" fine line, it was just some kind of wishful thinking by whatever manager was in charge of the Chromebooks project at the time.
Let's be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if the product EULA says somewhere "This device is licensed to you, not sold. You are granted a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and personal license to use the device for your private, non-commercial use."