While it shouldn’t come as a shock to most, it is official. Starting January 1, 2017, Google Drive for desktop will no longer support Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003. Given that Microsoft themselves no longer support these older versions of Windows themselves, it only makes sense that Google and other stop supporting it too. The announcement came via the Google G Suite blog and was very clear that while the app is no longer supported, it should still work. There won’t be any support or any further updates to the builds of Google Drive for these platforms.
Here is what Google said in the post:
The Google Drive desktop app (officially: “Google Drive for Mac/PC“) will continue to function on these platforms, but will not be actively tested and maintained. If you are still on one of these unsupported platforms, we encourage you to move to a newer version of Windows to continue using Google Drive desktop app.
So, the good news is if you still have a XP or Vista PC running, you can still use Google Drive but if something goes weird, you are on your own. The real message here folks is if you are running Windows XP or Vista, it is time to seriously consider an upgrade.
This is not the first time that Google has adjusted the support OS level for Windows or Mac. Earlier this year they announced that support for MacOS ended with anything older than Mavericks.
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