Gmail to stop supporting older versions of Chrome browser

Google announced on Tuesday that Gmail would stop supporting older versions of its Chrome browser, in a move aimed at Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Users of Chrome version 53 and older editions of the browser could start being redirected to the basic HTML version of Gmail as early as December, according to the company's blog.

Starting next week, users who would be affected by the change would start seeing a banner at the top of Gmail telling them to upgrade to an up-to-date version of Google's browser.

The affected browser versions would include Chrome v49, the last version of the software that supported XP and Vista. While Microsoft officially ended support for XP over two and a half years ago, Gmail had continued to work with it. Meanwhile, Vista Service Pack 2 would reach the end of its extended support period on 11 April.

Google further pointed out that users of outdated versions of Chrome were more vulnerable to security exploits, which was of particular importance for XP, as Microsoft was no longer even releasing security patches for the operating system.

Google suggested that administrators managing Chrome on behalf of their users upgrade them at this point and if it could not be upgraded due to an incompatible OS, Google recommended administrators take care of that as well.

According to Google, the latest Chrome version 55 came with a number of important security updates and it was one way to encourage upgrading to the latest version of Chrome.

Google added, Gmail users starting 8 February, 2017 would see a banner at the top of the Gmail interface for users who were still on Google Chrome browser version 53 or below.

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