14 DAY TRIAL // Google has recently announced that starting February 8, Gmail would no longer be supported by Google Chrome browser version 53 and older, with the company now pushing for users to update to the latest version of the application.
While this makes sense given the security improvements that are part of the newest Google Chrome versions, this is also the end for Windows XP and Windows Vista users who can’t actually update their browsers because support for their operating system isn’t provided either.
Specifically, starting with Google Chrome 50, Windows XP and Vista are no longer supported by the browser - Google Chrome 49 was the latest release for these two operating systems.
Google says that it can’t do anything about it and recommends users on XP and Vista “to migrate to more secure and supported systems.”
Banner to be displayed in older versions of Chrome
Starting with February 8, users running Google Chrome 53 or older and logging into their Gmail accounts will see a banner at the top of the interface telling them about the end of support for their browser versions. Gmail, however, will continue to work in these old Chrome versions until later this year, but will be redirected to the basic HTML version of the email service starting with December 2017.
“Google does not typically announce when we discontinue support for older versions of Chrome browser because of our current supported browser policy, which states that only the most recent version of Chrome is supported. This announcement was made given the expected impact on Windows XP and Windows Vista users and known security risks,” the company says.
Windows XP currently has a market share of more than 9 percent, which is worrying to say the least, especially now that Google Chrome is no longer being updated on this operating system. Internet Explorer isn’t receiving security updates either, so as far as Windows XP users are concerned, their options when it comes to browsers are becoming more and more limited.
It goes without saying that the easiest way to cope with these changes is to update to a newer version of Windows that still receives support, but given the fact that computers running Windows XP typically have older hardware, switching to a non-Windows platform could be a better choice.