Gmail to Stop Supporting Older Chrome Versions, Windows XP and Vista

Google on Wednesday announced that Gmail will stop supporting older Chrome versions by the end of this year. The company also confirmed that Gmail users who are still on Windows XP and Windows Vista are the most likely to be affected.

The company says that the latest Chrome version 55 comes with several important security updates and it's one way to encourage upgrading to the latest version of Chrome. According to Google, Gmail users starting February 8, 2017 will see a banner at the top of the Gmail interface for users who are still on Google Chrome browser version 53 or below. Considering Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP and Windows Vista versions, Google strongly "encourages" users to migrate to more secure and supported systems.

For now, Gmail will continue to function on Chrome browser version 53 and below through the end of the year. Chrome users who remain on older versions could be redirected to the basic HTML version of Gmail as early as December 2017.

Notably, users on Windows XP and Windows Vista will be affected by the change as Google points out that the version 49 was the last released version which supported those operating systems. Google citing security risks to users on older Chrome versions says that Gmail will be more vulnerable to security risks.

"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 versions 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 said in an announcement post.