Google will kill its Drive app for Windows XP, Vista, and Server 2003 on January 1, 2017

Google today announced it is ending support for its Google Drive desktop app for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003 on January 1, 2017. If you’re still on one of these platforms and want to keep using “Google Drive for Mac/PC,” the company recommends upgrading your version of Windows.

This means Google will continue updating Drive for users on these operating systems for a little more than two months. Starting next year, the app will still work, but it will not be actively tested nor maintained.

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Google notes that “these platforms are no longer actively supported by Microsoft,” which is partially correct. Microsoft retired Mainstream Support for Windows XP on April 14, 2009 and pulled Extended Support for the operating system on April 8, 2014. Mainstream Support for Windows Server 2003 ended on July 13, 2010, followed by Extended Support ending on July 14, 2015.

For Windows Vista, Mainstream Support ended on April 10, 2012, but Extended Support will continue until April 11, 2017. Mainstream Support includes free incident support, warranty claims, fixes for non-security as well as security bugs, plus design changes and feature requests. Extended Support consists solely of security updates.

Microsoft is thus still technically supporting Windows Vista for a few more months. That said, Vista only has around 1 percent market share, and chances are not many of those users also happen to have the Google Drive desktop app installed.

If you’re still on XP, Vista, or Server 2003, this is yet another reason to get the latest and greatest from Microsoft: Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. There’s really no good reason to be using decade-old operating systems.