Google has asked Chromium developers to stop using Windows 7 almost 11 months after Microsoft officially ended support for the operating system.

Google has asked Chromium developers to move to Windows 10, as reported by WindowsLatest.

“Windows 7 no longer works for building Chromium and nobody has volunteered to add support and Windows 7 is an unsupported OS; so this change formalises that Windows 10 is now required in order to build Chromium. This updates the documentation and modifies one of the build scripts so that a readable error message will be displayed when building on Windows 7 is attempted,” Google wrote in its Chromium resource page.

The change was inevitable as explained by Bruce Dawson, Google engineer who explained in a post, “I don't remember a decision to require Windows 10, but it seems inevitable that it will happen at some point, and maybe that time as now. There have been a few Windows 7 breaks lately and it eventually gets expensive to keep fixing them.”

“Community fixes could probably be accepted. Right now we don't even know what the current problem is; so the first step if somebody wants a fix would be for somebody who is encountering the problem to find out what has gone wrong - none of us have Windows 7 machines anymore. Using the debugger or event viewer or process explorer might reveal the problem, and maybe it will be something worth fixing,” Dawson added.

The new change only impacts developers. Google is yet to confirm when Chromium will completely stop working on older platforms, as per the report.

“Chromium and its derivatives still run on Windows 7. This only affects developers,” Google said.

Previously, Google had extended Google Chrome support for Windows 7 “until at least January 15, 2022.”

Microsoft had announced the end of Windows 7 lifecycle in January this year. “Microsoft will not be providing technical support for any issues, software updates, security updates or fixes for Windows 7 post-January 14,” the tech giant had said.

comment COMMENT NOW