Google Partners with Back Market to Keep Laptops out of Landfil, Launches a $3 ChromeOS Flex Kit

Google has announced a partnership with Back Market to breathe new life into older laptops — with a low-cost USB stick designed to simplify the process of installing ChromeOS Flex, a port of the advertising giant's web-focused Linux distribution.

"Last October marked a turning point for hundreds of millions of computers. Microsoft Windows 10 reached its end of support, putting those computers at risk of obsolescence," says Google's Ted Briggs, referring to Microsoft's increased system requirements for Windows 11 and its end of mainstream support for Windows 10. "This left many people with a difficult decision: spend hundreds on a new device, or continue using an insecure, outdated one. To offer another solution, Google is partnering with Back Market, a leader in refurbished electronics. Starting today, a new ChromeOS Flex USB Kit is available on their site to help you install our fast, secure and free operating system to modernize the PC or Mac you already own."

Google launched ChromeOS back in 2011, building on an internal project by Jeff Nelson known as "Google OS." Initially designed as a web-first Linux distribution built around Firefox, Google's development of its own in-house Chrome browser saw it shift to become the ChromeOS we know today: an operating system focused near-exclusively on running progressive web apps (PWAs) in the Chrome browser rather than installing applications locally.

ChromeOS is installed by default on Chromebook laptops from Google and its partners, but is also available to download and install on third-party hardware as ChromeOS Flex — and it's this that is the focus of Google's new partnership with Back Market. Together, the pair have launched a $3 kit designed to simplify installing ChromeOS Flex on their now-unsupported laptops, with a pre-loaded USB stick, easy-to-follow instructions, and video tutorials.

There is, perhaps, only only catch: hardware support in ChromeOS Flex isn't quite as broad as more general-purpose Linux distributions. As a result, anyone looking to install the software should check Google's ChromeOS Flex certified models list for their laptop — and check that, if listed, the support lifespan is far enough into the future to make installing the operating system worth it.

The ChromeOS Flex USB Key is currently listed on Back Market at $3, though at the time of writing was showing as out-of-stock; you can also download ChromeOS Flex for manual installation onto your own storage device from Google's ChromeOS site.