Google to pull Chrome plug on Windows XP at year's end

Another browser on XP bites the dust

Google on Thursday announced it will shut down support for Chrome on Windows XP at the end of the year.

"We will continue to provide regular updates and security patches to Chrome on XP through the end of 2015," said Mark Larson, Chrome's director of engineering, in a short blog post Thursday.

A year and a half ago, Larson pledged to support Chrome on the even-then-aged operating system until "at least April 2015."

"We know that not everyone can easily switch to a newer operating system," Larson said of Google's decision to continue supporting Chrome on XP after the latter's retirement. "Millions of people are still working on XP computers every day [and] we want those people to have the option to use a browser that's up-to-date and as safe as possible on an unsupported operating system."

But enough was apparently enough.
Microsoft called it quits on Windows XP a year ago Tuesday, when it issued the final scheduled security updates for the 2001 OS. (The company made a one-time exception shortly thereafter when it shipped an emergency patch for its Internet Explorer (IE) browser.)

Because Microsoft halted security fixes for IE on Windows XP on April 14, 2014, security professionals urged the OS's users to switch to another browser. Dropping IE for Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox or Opera Software's Opera was one way to minimize -- but not eliminate -- risk, they said.

Neither Mozilla or Opera have publicized end-of-support dates for their browsers on Windows XP.

According to Web metrics vendor Net Applications, approximately 18.5% of all Windows PCs ran XP in March, slightly more than half the 34.5% the OS accounted for in October 2013, when Larson set Chrome's earliest support demise at this month.

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Windows XP decline stalls as users hold onto aged OS, flaunt 2014 deadline

A third of all Windows users could still be running XP when Microsoft pulls patch plug in 53 weeks

The decline in usage share of Windows XP, which is slated for retirement in 53 weeks, has slowed significantly, hinting that millions of its users will hold onto the operating system much longer than some, including Microsoft, expect.

Data published monthly by California-based Web analytics company Net Applications indicates that XP's long-running slide has virtually stalled since Jan. 1.

In the past three months, Windows XP's monthly drop in share has averaged just 0.12 of a percentage point. That's less than a fifth as much as the 12-month average of 0.68 percentage points.

Other averages point to a major deceleration in declining usage share: XP's most recent six-month average decrease of 0.42 percentage points was less than half the 0.94 point average for the prior six months.

Likewise for longer timespans. In the last 12 months, Windows XP has dropped an average of 0.68 percentage points, while in the 12 months prior it fell by 0.83 percentage points.

In other words, in the second half of a 12-month stretch, XP's decline slowed by 55%; in the second year of a two-year span, it slowed 18%.

The slowdown paints a picture that must depress Microsoft, which has been banging the upgrade drum at Windows XP users for nearly two years, and has repeatedly warned them that free security updates will stop after April 8, 2014.

Net Applications' data can also be used to roughly plot XP's future usage share.

If the average decline of the last 12 months holds, XP will still account for 30% of all personal computers at the end of April 2014, or 33% of all systems expected to be running Windows at that time.

Recent estimates of XP's future by analysts, however, have been more conservative, with experts from Gartner and Forrester Research predicting that 10% to 20% of enterprise systems will still be on the aged OS when support stops.

Microsoft has not pegged XP's current corporate share, but the Redmond, Wash., software developer clearly knows it's large: In January, during the company's last quarterly earnings call, CFO Peter Klein said 60% of all enterprise PCs were running Windows 7.

Since few businesses adopted Windows Vista -- and with Vista's usage share now under 5%, some that did likely ditched it -- the remaining 40% must, by default, largely be Windows XP.

Windows XP will not suddenly stop working 53 weeks from now; it will boot, run applications and connect to the Internet as it did before. But it will not be served with security updates. Minus patches, and knowing how frequently cyber criminals uncover vulnerabilities, security experts expect hackers to exploit XP bugs that users will have no way of quashing.

Those same experts have split on whether Microsoft will extend Windows XP's support to protect what increasingly looks to be a major chunk of Windows users. But Microsoft has not signaled any desire to do so.

Granted, Microsoft will have supported XP for 12 years and 5 months, or about two-and-a-half years longer than its usual decade. That will be a record, as XP this month tied the previous Methuselah, Windows NT, which received 11 years and five months of support.


But Microsoft could still rethink its XP policy, and mimic rival Apple, which has continued to support OS X Snow Leopard, an operating system that, like XP, maintains a robust usage share.

Apple, which has never spelled out its security update policies, typically has stopped supporting "n-2," where "n" is the most current edition of OS X, around the time it releases "n."

Snow Leopard -- "n-2" in that formula, having been superseded by Lion and Mountain Lion, the latter representing "n" -- has continued to receive security updates, most recently on March 14, or about eight months after Mountain Lion's launch.

By continuing to update Snow Leopard, which powered 27% of all Macs last month, Apple patched 91% of all Macs last month.

Microsoft could do even better -- cover 96% of all current Windows PCs -- by continuing to support XP after April 2014.

But one expert thought that very unlikely. "I think they have to draw a line in the sand," said John Pescatore, then an analyst with Gartner, now with the SANS Institute, in an interview last December. "They've supported XP longer than anything else, so they'd be pretty clean from the moral end."

To track how long XP has before retirement, users can browse to an online countdown clock maintained by Camwood, a U.K. firm that specializes in helping businesses migrate to newer operating systems.

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