Google Apps kills support for Windows Vista by discontinuing support for Internet Explorer 9

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Google Apps kills support for Windows Vista by discontinuing support for Internet Explorer 9

Internet Explorer 9, a two year old browser, has been discontinued in support by Google Apps. Google revealed this detail over the weekend, effectively killing support for anyone who is still on Windows Vista. The reasoning? Because Internet Explorer 11 was released.

“Google’s test plans have been adjusted to now stop all testing and engineering work related to Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), as Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) was released on 17 October 2013. End users who access Gmail and other Google Apps services from an unsupported browser will be notified within the next few weeks through an in-product notification message or an interstitial pages with information about modern browsers and how to upgrade to them,” Google stated in an official blog post.

Internet Explorer 9 is the most modern browser available for Windows Vista users, as Microsoft has not and will not be making Internet Explorer 10 or Internet Explorer 11 available for the operating system. This effectively prevents Windows Vista users from enjoying Google Apps to the fullest, as key features will no longer be functional.

“We support the latest version of Google Chrome (which automatically updates whenever it detects that a new version of the browser is available) as well as the current and prior major release of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis. Each time a new version of one of these browsers is released, we begin supporting the update and stop supporting the third-oldest version,” Google explained.

On the flip side, Google has extended support for Windows XP for its Chrome browser. This move was mainly targeted towards businesses who still have the more-than-a-decade old operating system installed.

Story was updated to reflect that Internet Explorer 9 was not the default browser in Windows Vista. Internet Explorer 7 was infact the default browser in Vista.