In January,
Google warned that it intended to stop pushing updates to browsers on anything older than Android Kitkat (4.4), because it was just not a good way to spend company time. Earlier this week the company made an official announcement that sometime in May it would no longer update Chrome on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) devices.
According to the
blog post, Google stated that the number of Chrome users on Ice Cream has dropped by thirty percent and that “…Developing new features on older phones has become increasingly challenging, and supporting ICS [Ice Cream Sandwich] takes time away from building new experiences on the devices owned by the vast majority of our users…”
This decision isn’t going to effect users immediately, as Chrome is currently on version 40, and Google has stated that it will support Ice Cream Sandwich until version 42, after which it will be frozen, bugs and all, and receive no further updates. According to
Google’s FAQ page, this will only effect Ice Cream Sandwich users, which are
estimated to be about 5.9 percent of the roughly one billion Android users. That’s more than twice as many devices as Google’s newest version, Lollipop, currently boasts.
While it might not seem like a big deal, I might suggest that if you’re running Ice Cream Sandwich device, you switch to something like Firefox, which is still supporting Android 2.3 and up. Smartphones hold a lot of personal information that you probably don’t want anyone getting their hands on, so having a up-to-date internet browser is a must.
If you want more information about Google’s policy change, visit the
FAQ page.]]>
