All the big tech companies extended the useful lives of their servers and network assets in 2022. This will result in a lower annual depreciation on their fixed assets. Here’s a summary:
Microsoft Q2’23 10-Q
In July 2022, we completed an assessment of the useful lives of our server and network equipment. Due to investments in software that increased efficiencies in how we operate our server and network equipment, as well as advances in technology, we determined we should increase the estimated useful lives of both server and network equipment from four years to six years. This change in accounting estimate was effective beginning fiscal year 2023.
Google Q4’22 10-K
In January 2023, we completed an assessment of the useful lives of our servers and network equipment, resulting in a change in the estimated useful life of our servers and certain network equipment to six years.
Amazon Q4’22 10-K
We review the useful lives of equipment on an ongoing basis, and effective January 1, 2022 we changed our estimate of the useful lives for our servers from four years to five years and for our networking equipment from five years to six years. The longer useful lives are due to continuous improvements in our hardware, software, and data center designs.
Meta Q4’22 10-K
In connection with our periodic reviews of the estimated useful lives of property and equipment, we extended the estimated average useful lives of a majority of the servers and network assets from four years to 4.5 years, effective the second quarter of 2022, and further extended the useful lives to five years effective the fourth quarter of 2022. The changes in estimated useful lives were due to expected longer refresh cycles in our data centers.