I remember reading an article few days ago about this. The gist is:

• Google was not confident with Tensor 1 & 2 chips and didn’t want to burden itself with a hardware that was going to be difficult to support.
• Previous iterations of Pixel had Qualcomm chips, and QC doesn’t support its chip for that long.

Money. They don’t care about selling the older phones.

Feature parity between iPhone and Android is decreasing. Android biggest strengths were cost, features and flexibility.

Google pixel isn’t competing in cost. So features and flexibility are what matter. Apple has caught up. Unless you have a very extreme need for flexibility the iPhone looks more and more attractive.

Especially when you consider the iPhone strengths relative to android. Long term software support. Long term hardware support, even through third parties. It’s much easier to get someone to replace your iPhone screen and battery than a pixel. When it comes to third party repairs they are often cheaper as parts availability is better long term. These are more important now as new phones aren’t getting that much better, so it make more sense to keep your phone for longer.

Because the iPhones get long term software updates, developers target much newer versions of iOS. So apps are better, and are more likely to make use of new features. Many play store apps still target Android 5 from 2014. If your buying an android device apps are developed for an OS version deployed nearly a decade ago.

Much better security and trust in that security. People are increasingly concerned about Google.

Google can’t convince people it will be more secure. They can’t easily improve third party repair market. So the effective cost per year of safe use of pixel devices is much lower than an iPhone. Google only remedy is longer term support.

If Google cared they would be updating the original Pixel with at least security updates. Apple provided an update for the iPhone 6 this year. The iPhone 6 was released the same year as the original Pixel.

To be fair I think this is aimed at matching or surpassing Apple, pretty sure Fairphone has nothing to do with this

Apple has been doing 7 years of support for a while now since the XS and XR (i.e. since 2018). They get a lot of bad rep but they’ve been pretty impressive regarding software support.

I’m eyeing up a Fairphone 5 for my new travel handset though (need something easily repaired by myself and that can take a beating) but I’m a little let down by only 5 years software support guaranteed. Fingers crossed it ends up more than 5 in reality - 2TB storage should mean it’ll be an amazing offline mapping device for years to come!

Software maintenance and updates cost money. Nobody reasonable would say you’re entitled to a lifetime of support for a piece of hardware you buy, unless you specifically pay for this service. The specific support lifetime that is cost-effective for the business and consumer depends on the product and the business, it’s not an easy target for regulation.

7 years of security updates isn’t that bad for a phone.

Could but wouldn’t.