Google has announced that Chrome support for Windows 7 will be extended to January 15, 2023 for all “critical and security updates”. The company had previously stated that support for Windows 7 will end on July 15, 2021 and then extended to January 15, 2022.
Google Chrome is by and large the most popular browser in the world, so discontinuing support for Windows 7 would have been a blow to companies still using the old operating system. Microsoft discontinued support for Windows 7 in January 2020.
Why the extension?
Google likely stepped up support for Windows 7 due to the challenges businesses around the world are facing. With organizations suffering the aftermath of the pandemic and grappling with a rapidly changing work environment, many have not been able to prioritize OS migrations.
According to a Google’s Q2 2020 report, 21% of all companies using Google Chrome still migrated to Windows 10. With this expansion, the company hopes these companies will be able to take full advantage of Chrome’s business features with the flexibility that they offer need to continue to support their employees as they migrate.
What this means for corporate users
For corporate customers who are still working with Windows 7, this is a great relief. Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 7 back in January 2020, and Google wanted to stop supporting Chrome on Windows 7 in January 2022.
This means that companies still using Windows 7 don’t have to worry about security issues or vulnerabilities in their browser. It’s also likely that the company took this step to prevent companies from migrating to the new Microsoft Edge, which is also based on Chromium.
When it first released in 2015, Microsoft Edge was Windows 10 exclusive, but that changed when the company released its newer version. The newer Microsoft Edge is available for both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, and adoption is pretty high.
However, despite its questionable reputation for managing user privacy, Chrome is still one of the best browsers out there. It’s incredibly versatile and has a lot of built-in features to help you maximize productivity.
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