Microsoft
Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser was an improvement over the initial version of Edge in several ways, including its support for Windows 7 and Windows 8. But the end of the road is coming: Microsoft has announced that Edge will end support for Windows 7 and Windows 8. In mid-January 2023, shortly after these operating systems stopped receiving regular security updates. Support for Windows 7 and 8 will also end Microsoft Edge Webview2which can use the Edge rendering engine to embed web pages into non-Edge apps.
The end of support date for Edge coincides with the January 10 end of support for the security update for Windows 7 and Windows 8, and End of support for Google Chrome for Windows 7 and 8 at version 110. Since the underlying Chromium engine in both Chrome and Edge is open source, Microsoft could continue to support Edge in older versions of Windows if it wanted to, but the company uses both end-of-support dates to justify a clean break for Edge.
If you think Windows 7 has already stopped getting security updates, you’re not wrong. Most people have stopped receiving general purpose security updates for Windows 7 again in 2020, about a decade after its original release. But because Windows 7 was so popular with businesses, Microsoft took the unusual step of offering three additional years of optional paid update support for the operating system. Those updates are now ending as well; A similar program is not offered for the less well-known Windows 8 operating system, which is 10 years after its founding.
Edge will continue to run on Windows 11 and later versions of Windows 10, as well as supported versions of macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.
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