Google extends Chrome support for Windows 7 until January 15, 2022

Martin Brinkmann
Nov 21, 2020
Updated • Nov 17, 2021
Google Chrome, Windows, Windows 7
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Google revealed this week that it decided to extend support for Google Chrome on Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system until at least January 15, 2022.

Update: Google announced that it will extend support for Windows 7 through January 15, 2023.

Support for Windows 7 ended on January 14, 2020 officially for all Home systems while Enterprise and business customers could extend support by up to three years. The organizations and companies had to pay Microsoft for the privilege of receiving up to three years worth of security updates for the operating system.

While Microsoft gave Home users no option to extend the life of the operating system, browser makers and other software companies decided to extend support of their products because large numbers of users were still using devices with Windows 7 when official support ended.

Google announced that it would support Windows 7 until at least July 15, 2021 initially. The company revealed that it could extend the period, and that is what it did. The new support end has been moved to January 15, 2022 so that Windows 7 users get an additional six months of Chrome support.

The new end of Chrome support for Windows 7 is still a year short of Microsoft's own maximum end of support for paying customers. Microsoft will provide support until January 2023 for companies and organizations that pay the company for three full years of extended security updates.

Another extension is not out of the question according to Mac Christoff, Chrome Engineering Director; this would depend on a number of factors including the speed of migration and usage numbers. It is therefore at least in theory possible that Chrome will also be supported after January 2022 if the figures justify it.

Google's announcement focuses on Enterprise customers and the challenges that some of these companies faced in 2020. According to Christoff, 21% of organizations are still in the process of migrating devices to Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system, and 1% of Enterprise customers have not even started the process.

Now You: are you still on Windows 7?

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Google extends Chrome support for Windows 7 until January 15, 2022
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Google extends Chrome support for Windows 7 until January 15, 2022
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Google revealed this week that it decided to extend support for Google Chrome on Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system until at least January 15, 2022.
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Comments

  1. EP said on November 17, 2021 at 11:03 am
    Reply

    Google is extending Win7 support once again until mid-January 2023 as noted here:
    https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7100626?hl=en

    “Important: Chrome is extending support for Windows 7 through January 15, 2023 for critical security and stability updates.”

  2. Mothy said on November 23, 2020 at 4:33 pm
    Reply

    I still have an old laptop on Windows 7 that is primarily used to stream music to a home theater system either via SiriusXM in Firefox ESR or Spotify desktop client. Get this, it isn’t patched beyond Service pack 1. OMG! Yet it still has zero issues as it is locked down via other security layers (patches are but one layer). It would actually still be on Windows XP if not for the need of HDMI audio support that is only available in 7. As to Chrome, like Windows 10 it will never touch my hardware as I consider it spyware.

  3. Dianthus said on November 22, 2020 at 4:50 pm
    Reply

    Ohw have two pc’s and still on XP also. I my catalog pc for data and for browsing my news sites daily. To layse to get it all set up on W7 so we do 2 pc’s. W7 can go on untill 2025+ with not a lot of problems. My biggest problem on Xp is the browsing bc is old but still works

  4. Peter Pal said on November 22, 2020 at 10:47 am
    Reply

    Unless you are really depends on Windows 7 for something, or for your work, you shouldn’t stay on Windows 7 forever, it’s not fit for the future and for the sake of your life

    1. DaveyK said on November 22, 2020 at 1:30 pm
      Reply

      I’m not staying on it forever, but as long as I still get patches and all my software works on it, why move to an uglier and less user-friendly OS (ie, Windows 10)?

  5. Dr. Williams said on November 22, 2020 at 7:40 am
    Reply

    Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Windows 10 are the two pieces of software I always recommend people avoid.

    1. Iron Heart said on November 22, 2020 at 8:12 am
      Reply

      @Dr. Williams

      So, what do you use instead? Many people need to run Windows because they depend on certain kinds of software, and as far as Chrome is concerned, don’t make me laugh by saying that you use Firefox… The spying level of both is not far apart these days.

  6. Anonymous said on November 22, 2020 at 1:18 am
    Reply

    What the heck is this ‘chrome’ everyone keeps talking about?

  7. Anonymous said on November 22, 2020 at 12:54 am
    Reply

    Chrome is really slow nowadays with their reporter tool malware that keeps powering on even it was already disabled deleted many times, I gave up using Chrome

  8. Clairvaux said on November 22, 2020 at 12:48 am
    Reply

    YES ! Of course ! Windows 7 for ever !

  9. Anonymous said on November 21, 2020 at 7:46 pm
    Reply

    Why stop supporting it when there’s zero useful features exclusive to Windows 10? It can still run on any version of Windows long as its a Windows application.

    I’m never using Windows 10 on my primary machine. I got Windows 7 with ESU and continuing to do so longest I can. I will probably move to Linux in the future. Google, Apple, Microsoft, all are getting more intrusive and building tracking directly into their hardware.

  10. Marcin said on November 21, 2020 at 7:08 pm
    Reply

    Yes, I’m still on Windows 7. And probabbly will be as long as Firefox support will last.
    I’m also pretty sure that this date of 15 January 2022 is too early and Google will probably extend the support more that one time.

  11. Valrobex said on November 21, 2020 at 4:57 pm
    Reply

    I’ve switched to Linux Mint and use Win 7 in a dual boot or virtual box for my legacy software. Like Tom Howack I’m never going to use Win 10. I did have a brief episode using Win 8.1 but never again!

    I strongly suspect Win 7 will be around for a long time – even longer than Win XP (which I still play around with on some super old software) Call me old fashioned or even a “dinosaur” but at this stage I can do everything I want with Mint or Win 7.

    Incidentally, regarding Google and it’s spyware Chrome I avoid it like the plague. So this news about Google supporting Win 7 for an additional 6 months is something I find amusing. Here’s Google bending it’s knee to market forces instead of using it’s power to change the market. Imagine that! I wonder what Google will do should we all continue to use Win 7 and not “succumb” to Google or MS’s dictatorial practices.

    I know it’s probably wishful thinking but what will those two companies do should a large group of us users continue to switch to open source software. ( I suspect MS is concerned which is why MS is getting involved with Linux. Perhaps they see the handwriting on the wall. Just an idle thought…)

    1. Allwynd said on November 22, 2020 at 1:06 pm
      Reply

      Nobody will use Windows 7 forever. The only people that still use Windows 7 are two groups:

      – those who need it for work and their workplace hasn’t upgraded to Windows 10 yet
      – those who believe that Windows 10 is worse and intentionally use Windows 7

      Both of these groups do not amount more than 25% of the Windows market share and that percentage keeps dropping. By 2022, there will be less than 10% of Windows 7 users, which is currently the amount of Windows 8 users.

      Some people just don’t care about spyware or stability and will still use Windows 10 and their number will increase. There will never be such a scenario where Windows 7 usage will be so high that Google will keep supporting Chrome. Now, even some games start releasing and require Windows 10 and you can’t play them on Windows 7.

  12. Bye Bye said on November 21, 2020 at 3:41 pm
    Reply

    My guess is that most of the machines that still are on Windows 7 are older, low-end ones, on which that behemoth resource-hog monster Chrome is a flaming carcrash anyway.. So, there are and WILL BE other way better options than Chrome that will stick around until 2023 and beyond. I feel a bit sad for Chrome in this case, so much ad-money that goes into someone else’s pockets.. That’s gotta hurt, the greedy monster is never satisfied.

    1. Dianthus said on November 22, 2020 at 4:48 pm
      Reply

      W7 64bit Pro 16GB RAM, i5-3.8-4.1Ghz with an GTX 1050Ti (still updates).

    2. DaveyK said on November 22, 2020 at 1:27 pm
      Reply

      I still run Windows 7 as the primary OS on my PC, it’s a Ryzen system, so only 3 years old. I run Win 7 because I massively prefer it to Windows 10, all my software still works on it, and it is still patched via ESU updates.

      I imagine the extension of Chrome support is also because Chrome is popular in many businesses these days and a number of these are still using Windows 7.

    3. NeonRobot said on November 22, 2020 at 10:09 am
      Reply

      Wrong. 1950x + radeon VII here.
      Do production works under Win7 x64.
      New radeons already have drivers for Win7.

    4. Win7user said on November 21, 2020 at 5:34 pm
      Reply

      Wrong. I run 7 on my Ryzen 1600AF build with 16GB of RAM and an RX580. I refuse to use the spyware that is Windows 10, except for cases when I’m forced to(running DX12 games). 7 is faster, more stable, has much lower DPC Latency(constant problem I’ve had with 10 on all of my systems) and no spyware baked in. I’m also on Firefox, with ungoogled Chromium as my 2nd browser. Also, as long as you don’t go crazy opening 20+ tabs, even machines with 4GB of RAM and 10yr old quad core CPUs can easily run both Chrome and Firefox. It’s funny how people open tens of tabs and then wonder why the browser is such a huge RAM hog.

      1. Bye Bye said on November 22, 2020 at 11:34 am
        Reply

        Yeah, we got a badass over here with a mean machine at his/her disposal. Now, do you really think you and your gear is the normal, average Windows 7 user? For one of you, there’s a MILLION with really old low-end gear and you know it. Now go whine about too many tabs open to some kid in Bangladesh whose crappy laptop is dying everytime Google Chrome is searching his machine for incompatible scary software or that whatwasitcalledagain softwareupdatergarbage that consumes 100% CPU for quite a while. Google Chrome is NOT for weak machines, at all. But hey, at least you got to brag about your specs..

  13. Antony said on November 21, 2020 at 3:34 pm
    Reply

    What is wrong with all these browser companies? If the software is able to execute in a specific Windows version, it should do so, but it should state that problems with it will not be fixed and if websites don’t work, it’s my problem. Stop enforcing where I can execute the software!

    1. Anonymous said on November 23, 2020 at 12:24 pm
      Reply

      It costs money to maintain browsers for an operating system that is now end of life. Either upgrade to a Linux distro or Windows 10.

    2. William said on November 22, 2020 at 5:08 am
      Reply

      It’s not always that easy. Chrome (and by extension Chromium) leverages many APIs only available in later versions of Windows, and as such has to check for those APIs on startup and dynamically load them. Then it has to have a fallback for the older Windows versions that don’t have those APIs.

      Google has made a business decision to not support the fallback methods forever, but has become generous by moving back the date in which they sunset those fallbacks.

      1. Antony said on November 22, 2020 at 6:38 pm
        Reply

        @William, I fully understand what you’re saying. But, are you sure that this will be the case when Chrome and Firefox refuse to execute Windows 7? That there will be mandatory APIs that will make these browsers unable to function? Well, I doubt it. Does anyone know why Firefox 52 was the last version that could execute in Windows XP? What was it that Firefox 53 had that couldn’t function in XP? They could do it like Node.js. The last versions didn’t run in Windows 7, but they put a system variable that when set, it bypasses platform check and now you can execute in Windows 7, but they state that it is not supported and that bugs will not be fixed. Instead, browser companies decide that whatever the reason you have, you are not allowed to use the software in Windows versions that they decide.

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