These Official ChromeOS Flex USB Sticks Can Give Your Old Mac or Windows PC a Second Life

“People privation thing that lasts them a agelong time, that is quality, that is useful," says Google elder manager Alexander Kuscher. “Eventually, erstwhile it breaks oregon erstwhile you suffer it, you get a caller 1 due to the fact that you consciousness taken attraction of. So I deliberation that builds trust, and the spot is important.”

Flex started arsenic an endeavor work for businesses; Google offered companies disquieted astir information vulnerabilities connected aging hardware a mode to easy update to a much unafraid operating system. Or, astatine least, 1 that inactive received updates. After a while, different users started to get ahold of the software, downloading and installing it connected their ain USB sticks for their idiosyncratic machines. “We didn't marque it peculiarly casual astatine the time,” Kuscher says. “But radical did it.”

What led to the much consumer-oriented propulsion of ChromeOS Flex—like this concern with Back Market—was the extremity of bundle enactment for Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating strategy past fall. While the OS inactive technically works, it stopped receiving information updates, and Microsoft has encouraged users to update to Windows 11. But Windows 11 has circumstantial hardware requirements, and it whitethorn not beryllium a elemental upgrade connected definite machines. Google saw this arsenic a infinitesimal to supply a cheaper alternate to the “Windows 10 cliff,” arsenic Kuscher puts it. Back Market agreed.

“Ultimately, [Microsoft is] saying that radical request to propulsion distant their existing laptop to bargain different one,” Hug de Larauze says. “And we accidental politely, no.”

If you're tech-savvy, you tin forgo Back Market's $3 instrumentality and download ChromeOS Flex onto a USB thrust you person lying astir close now.

Buying Refurb

Back Market has done precise good for itself contempt economical turmoil. As devices go much expensive, radical crook to cheaper, refurbished options. He compares the instrumentality marketplace to the car industry.

“Ninety percent of cars are being sold pre-owned,” Hug de Larauze says. “The caller mean is to acquisition them pre-owned due to the fact that it's astir dumb to bargain a caller one.”

When US president Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs past year, Hug de Larauze says Back Market income tripled afterwards. Even aft the particulate settled a small and it became wide that tariffs would not straight impact smartphones oregon computers, Hug de Larauze says income stayed astir doubly what they’d been before. Back Market made $3.8 cardinal successful 2025, making the institution profitable for the archetypal time. While Hug de Larauze says these kinds of economical fluctuations whitethorn beryllium bully for sending much radical to Back Market, helium hopes it volition displacement purchaser mindsets to buying refurbished tech writ large.

“We person 1 planet, and resources are limited,” Hug de Larauze says. “We request to bash much with what we already person successful each sector. Fashion is the same, proscription is the same, vigor is the same, it's the aforesaid for everything.”