Microsoft may be officially putting Windows XP out to pasture next spring, but Google Chrome will keep chugging along with security fixes and updates on the operating system for a full year after.
The Google Chrome Blog announced today that Windows XP users won't completely be abandoned come April 8, 2014, the date when Microsoft will officially retire the desktop operating system after more than a decade.
Migrating from XP
Larson says the move was made to protect Chrome users from "unpatched browser bugs [which] are often used by malware to infect computers."
With hundreds of millions of users still using Windows XP, Google hopes the stay of execution will help users and organizations migrate to more current versions of Microsoft's operating system.
Google plans to automatically update Chrome on Windows XP with the latest security fixes the same way it does with Windows 8 and other platforms in an effort to reduce malware and phishing attacks.
IT administrators are also encouraged to use Legacy Browser Support, which makes Chrome the default option for web applications that might otherwise depend upon unsupported legacy browsers.
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