The Web giant on Thursday announced it is extending support for Chrome on XP through the end of the year in an effort to keep users safe from browser-based vulnerabilities. The move comes after Google in October 2013 said it would keep supporting Chrome on XP through "at least" April 2015.

Now that April 2015 has arrived, Google has decided it will retire Chrome support for XP at the end of the year.

"We know that not everyone can easily switch to a newer operating system," Google Chrome Engineering Director Mark Larson wrote in a blog post Thursday. "Millions of people are still working on XP computers every day. We want those people to have the option to use a browser that's up-to-date and as safe as possible on an unsupported operating system."

That said, he reminded users to upgrade to a new OS as soon as possible. Microsoft itself stopped supporting XP on April 8, 2014, meaning computers running the old OS have not received security patches for more than a year and are riddled with critical security vulnerabilities.

"At the operating system level, computers running XP are inherently in danger of being infected by malware and viruses, making it increasingly difficult for Chrome to provide a secure browsing environment," Larson wrote. "That's why we strongly encourage everyone to update to a supported, secure operating system."

PC Magazine