This is a much more interesting requirement than just "I want better stuff". AV1 is basically the "royalty free" alternative to HEVC. Its not necessarily BETTER than HEVC, but you don't have to pay royalties to MPEG-LA for its use.
Basically, what is going on is this; Google believes that their media streaming mass is now enough that they can beat down MPEG-LA. Up until now, MPEG-LA has railroaded every silicon vendor into paying them royalties to include AVC and HEVC, and to LEAVE OUT royalty free codecs like Theora, VP9, and AV1. This has, in turn, forced MEDIA VENDORS to use AVC and HEVC encoding for the media that they are distributing, and also paying royalties to MPEG-LA on those -- because they have no alternative since the recipient hardware doesn't support Theora, VP9, or AV1.
But now that Google is making it a requirement, the expectation is that silicon vendors are now going to go back to MPEG-LA and say "Hey screw you, I'll still pay you the royalties for HEVC, but we have to strike out this part of the contract that says we can't also include AV1. We can't sell the chip at all without it, so if you don't like it, suck an egg."
In the short term, which means over the next few YEARS, this will have no impact on you at all, because the media vendors will continue to have to support legacy hardware. But after all of the hardware in use was made AFTER the AV1 requirement came into effect, the media vendors will have the option to drop HEVC and save on the royalties. After the media vendors drop HEVC, then so can the hardware vendors and MPEG-LA can die.
Even if you are a consumer of pirated media, remember that pirates don't pay royalties and operate with the objective of sticking it to "the man". That means that the stuff pirates encode will continue to use AVC and HEVC in order to maximize consumption.
Now as far as gaining future updates goes, Google is saying that they want NEW devices to support it. Legacy hardware will certainly NOT be limited in this manner. Also, Google isn't subject to these requirements -- hypocrisy is legally permissible, although it would likely be bad form.
And don't get caught up in the wait for all the amazing stuff that is coming "next year". There will *always* be something better just around the corner if you wait, so you will end up waiting literally forever.
