Google had quietly announced yesterday that Gmail would end support for older versions of Google Chrome by the end of 2017. And to indicate the same, starting on 8th February, the company will display “a banner at the top of Gmail interface” to encourage the users who haven’t upgraded to the latest version of the Chrome browser (at least version 54) yet.
Speaking of versions, currently, the Chrome browser is on version 55 which was released back in December last year. The company in its blogpost notes that the version 55 brings along a handful of security updates and users who are on the older versions of the browser are “more vulnerable to security risks.” It further suggests that these “users will not have access to new features and bug fixes.”
Also Read: Chrome for Android enhances data saver mode, touted to save up to 70 percent data
This move will have a huge impact on users who are still stuck on Windows XP and Windows Vista as version 49 was the last browser update received by both of these operating systems. Also, Microsoft had already announced in 2015 that these systems were not under the company’s maintenance. What this essentially means is that these systems can be compromised cyber-criminals with little or no effort. So, we strongly recommend our users to switch to the latest versions of Chrome (and the operating system) if possible.
On failing to update the Chrome browser to version 54 or above, users will be “redirected to the basic HTML version of Gmail as early as December 2017.”
Also Read: Chrome for Android now lets you save data and view Webpages, Videos offline
Google in its blog post had also suggested administrators who maintain the Chrome browser on behalf of users to immediately update it to the latest version. It also recommends the admins to switch to the latest versions of the operating system in order to get continued support for Chrome.
Considering that Gmail (and Chrome) is one of the most used services day-in-and-day-out, we recommend our readers again to update to the newest versions of the Chrome.
In case, you have any doubts feel free to comment, we will try to answer your queries.
