Google has announced that Chrome support is going to be extended for Windows 7 until January 15, 2023, for all “critical and security updates.” The company had previously stated that support for Windows 7 would end on July 15, 2021, and then be extended to January 15, 2022.
Google Chrome is by and large the most popular browser in the world, so ending support for it on Windows 7 would have been a blow for organizations still using the legacy operating system. Microsoft already ended support for Windows 7 in January 2020.
Why the Extension?
Google likely extended Windows 7 support due to the challenges faced by organizations across the globe. As companies suffer from the fallout of the pandemic and come to grips with a rapidly changing work environment, many have been unable to prioritize operating system migrations.
According to a Google report from Q2 2020, 21% of all organizations that used Google Chrome were still migrating to Windows 10. With this extension, the company hopes that such organizations will be able to take full advantage of Chrome's enterprise features, with the flexibility they require to continue supporting their employees as they migrate.
What This Means for Enterprise Users
For enterprise customers still running Windows 7, this comes as a major relief. Microsoft already ended support for Windows 7 back in January 2020, and Google was going to stop supporting Chrome on Windows 7 in January 2022.
This means that organizations that still use Windows 7 don't have to worry about any security issues or vulnerabilities with their browser. It's also likely that the company made this move to prevent organizations from switching to the new Microsoft Edge, which is also based on Chromium.
When it was first released in 2015, Microsoft Edge was exclusive to Windows 10, but that changed when the company released its newer iteration. The newer Microsoft Edge is available for both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, and adoption is quite high.
However, Chrome is still one of the best browsers out there, despite its questionable reputation for managing user privacy. It's incredibly versatile and has a lot of built-in features to maximize productivity.