Google ends Chrome support for Windows Vista and XP next year

Support for the ancient (in the case of XP) / no-longer-supported (OS X Mountain Lion and older) operating systems will end in April 2016. As the systems lacked critical updates, there was only so much Chrome could do to protect users from potential viruses or malware without the help of Microsoft patching its own OS. OS X users tend to update their machines relatively quickly, so dropping support for older versions of Apple’s desktop operating system probably won’t affect all that many users.

None of this is all that surprising: It’s been 14 years since Windows XP was released and 7 years Windows XP Service Pack 3 rolled out. In spite of every hint, threat, promise, offer and plea, Netmarketshare reports that 11.68 per cent of the world’s Web traffic still comes from browsers on XP.

Starting April 2016, Google will stop updating its Chrome browser with security fixes and updates.

Yet another reason for those few stragglers to finally dump that silly excuse for an operating system called Windows XP, and move towards something newer.

Just as Microsoft has stopped issuing updates for Windows XP, so Google has set a cut-off point of April 2016 for Chrome support on older OSes. Sure, Internet Explorer and other Microsoft apps aren’t getting software updates anymore, but there’s always Google Chrome, right?

Google says that using such old operating systems runs a far greater risk of virus and malware infection.