Windows 7 Professional and Enterprise editions will no longer receive extended security updates for critical and important vulnerabilities starting Tuesday, January 10, 2023.
The Extended Security Update program was the last resort option for customers who still needed to run legacy Microsoft products past their end of support on Windows 7 systems.
“Most Windows 7 devices will not meet the hardware requirements for upgrading to Windows 11, as an alternative, compatible Windows 7 PCs can be upgraded to Windows 10 by purchasing and installing a full version of the software,” Microsoft explains.
Currently, Windows 7 runs on over 11% of all Windows systems worldwide, while Windows 8.1 is used by 2.59% of Microsoft customers, according to Statcounter GlobalStats.
This version of Microsoft Edge will also be the last to support Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2. A similar announcement was made by Google in October when the company said that version 110 of its Google Chrome web browser would also likely drop support for Windows 7 and 8.1 starting in February 2023.
Google Chrome now has a market share of over 64%, followed by Safari with roughly 18% and Microsoft Edge with just over 4%. Other vendors have already dropped support for Windows 7 ahead of the date when the OS will stop receiving security updates.
