Gmail, the email service from search giant Google will stop working on older versions of the Chrome browser. Google has announced that Gmail will stop working on Chrome 53 or lower versions by the end of this year.
Google has a silent update mechanism turned on by default on Chrome which updates the browser to its latest version by default. The updates are installed on the fly in order to fix the security vulnerabilities noticed with the browser. Google says consumers using Gmail on older versions of Chrome will be exposed to security vulnerabilities.
With the announcement, Google is making it mandatory for users to switch to at least version 54 of Chrome on their devices. The limitation will disable some of the core features of Gmail on older versions of Chrome. "Users who remain on Chrome v53 and below could be redirected to the basic HTML version of Gmail as early as Dec 2017."
This move will mostly affect users running Microsoft's Windows XP and Vista operating system. Google has dropped support for these versions of Windows and the last stable release for these systems was Chrome 49. Google plans to show a banner on top of Gmail encouraging users to upgrade to latest version starting next week.