Even though Windows 7 is officially a dead operating system, many users and institutions will still take years to migrate. This has prompted Google to keep providing updates from Chrome on Windows 7 until the beginning of 2022. Where it originally planned to supply updates until July 15th 2021, it will now support the browser on Windows 7 until January 15th, 2022.
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“Migrating to Windows 10 was a part of many organizations’ roadmap for the year,” Google wrote in a blog post. “But as new priorities for IT teams emerged, we’ve heard that 21% of organizations are still in the process of migrating to Windows 10. With this extension of support, enterprises with their upgrades still in progress can rest assured that their users remaining on Windows 7 will continue to benefit from Chrome’s security and productivity benefits.”
While support for Windows 7 was dropped by Microsoft in January 2020 for all Home systems, support for Enterprise and business customers could be extended by up to three years. The organizations and companies had to pay Microsoft for the privilege of receiving up to three years’ worth of security updates for the operating system.
While Microsoft gave Home users no option to extend the life of the operating system, browser makers and other software companies decided to extend support of their products because large numbers of users were still using devices with Windows 7 when official support ended.
The new end of Chrome support for Windows 7 is still a year short of Microsoft’s own maximum end of support for paying customers. Microsoft will provide support until January 2023 for companies and organizations that pay the company for three full years of extended security updates.
The biggest concern for institutions will be the security of their Windows 7 systems. With Chrome dropping official support a year before their final support date from Microsoft, their options would be limited. Internet Explorer is also no longer supported, so they may need to do that migration sooner than previously expected.
