Google has announced it will no longer support Windows XP, as well as Windows Vista and older versions of Mac OS X—including 10.6 (Snow Leopard), 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion)—come April 2016.
Because Google has used parts from Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox browsers, they made the project open source. Google Chrome for Mac is widely popular because it offers Google-specific features on your Mac. Download Google Chrome on your Mac to get a multi-functional web browser that’s easy to use and customize, no matter your skill level.
Marc Pawliger, director of engineering at Google, said in a company blog post: “If you’re still using one of these unsupported platforms, we encourage you to move to a newer operating system to ensure that you continue to receive the latest Chrome versions and features.”
Since Microsoft and Apple no longer actively support such platforms, Pawliger warned these operating systems are missing critical security updates and have a greater potential to be infected by viruses and malware.
“Starting April 2016, Chrome will continue to function on these platforms but will no longer receive updates and security fixes,” said Pawliger.
Microsoft officially ended support for Windows XP in April 2014, while mainstream support for Vista ended in 2012.
Despite being out-of-date, XP is still widely used by small and mid-sized companies, as well as the public sector across Eastern Europe, reported ZDNet.
Furthermore, according to NetMarketShare, XP continues to run on nearly 12 percent of the world’s PCs. Meanwhile, Mac users are more likely to update to current operating systems, with less than 1 percent of computers running Mac OS X 10.8 or earlier.
The announcement comes as an extension to the lifecycle of Google Chrome on Windows’ outdated systems, as the search giant had originally stated that support for Chrome on XP would end by April 2015.