14 DAY TRIAL // Google has officially announced it will stop releasing new versions and security updates for its Chrome browser for older operating systems like Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X versions 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8.
The cut-off date is April 2016, after which Chrome will continue to work as usual, but users will be left to fend off malware, bugs, and other security issues on their own.
Google's explained its decision by the fact that both Microsoft and Apple have stopped actively supporting the aforementioned operating systems.
"We strongly encourage users on older, unsupported platforms such as Windows XP to update to a supported, secure operating system," said Google's Marc Pawliger, director of Engineering. "Such older platforms are missing critical security updates and have a greater potential to be infected by viruses and malware."
Google already delayed the initial XP-Chrome cut-off date back in April
Google initially planned to put Chrome for XP into an EOL phase in April 2015, but later changed its mind because the operating system still had a solid market share.
According to recent statistics released for the month of October, Windows XP usage is at 11.86%, still the world's second most used OS. Back in April 2015, XP's market share was 15.93%.
While the latest versions of Chrome will probably break in XP, the current Chrome releases are still some of the most modern Web browsers supported on XP, since Microsoft only provides support for IE8.
Mozilla has yet to announce a cut-off date for Firefox on XP.
On the other side, Mac users expected Chrome support to be dropped for older Mac OS X versions. This is because Google was generally in sync with Apple's default strategy of only supporting the three most recent OS X versions. You won't hear too many complaints from OS X users since they usually keep their operating systems up to date.