Google ends support for Gmail in Chrome on XP and Vista

Google has announced that it will stop supporting Gmail on Chrome 53 and older on February 8. This means that the mail service within that browser will no longer work properly on Windows XP and Vista, for which version 49 is the last available version.

The tech giant indicates that Gmail will continue to work on the older versions until the end of 2017, but that users are more vulnerable to security risks and will no longer receive new functions. People who are still using the outdated software as of December 2017 may be presented with the basic HTML version of the site.

Google cites that Microsoft has already stopped supporting Windows XP and will also do so with Windows Vista on April 11. These operating systems no longer receive security updates, so any vulnerabilities are no longer repaired. Therefore, Google recommends users of those operating systems to upgrade to a newer system.

Gmail users who still want to use an outdated operating system can turn to Firefox. Gmail also works on that, and Mozilla has previously indicated that it will continue to support XP and Vista with new features up to version 52. How long Gmail will continue to work on that version is unknown. The current available version of Firefox is 51.