Users of Chrome version 53 and older editions of the browser could be redirected to the basic HTML version of Gmail as early as December 2017. The older version users will see a warning at the top telling them to upgrade to an up-to-date version of Google’s browser. “Gmail users that are still on Windows XP and Windows Vista are the most likely to be affected because v49 was the last released version which supported those operating systems,” Google explained in the announcement. Even though Microsoft officially ended support for XP more than two and a half years ago, Gmail has continued to work with it. Vista Service Pack 2 will reach the end of its extended support period on April 11. Google also pointed out that those using Gmail on older versions of the browser are “more vulnerable to security risks and users will not have access to new features and bugfixes.” “Google does not typically announce when we discontinue support for older versions of Chrome browser because of our current supported browser policy, which states that only the most recent versions of Chrome is supported. This announcement was made given the expected impact on Windows XP and Windows Vista users and known security risks,” the company said in an announcement post. The search giant strongly “encourages” users to migrate to more secure and supported systems considering that Microsoft has stopped supporting Windows XP and Windows Vista versions.
