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Google has announced it is ending support for Windows XP and Windows Vista in April 2016. At the same time, Chrome will be also cease to be supported on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.7 Lion, and 10.8 Mountain Lion.

The search giant said the move is to encourage users to move off operating systems that are no longer actively supported by Microsoft or Apple.

"Starting April 2016, Chrome will continue to function on these platforms but will no longer receive updates and security fixes," said Marc Pawliger, Chrome director of engineering at Google. "If you are still on one of these unsupported platforms, we encourage you to move to a newer operating system."

By the time Chrome support ends in April 2016, it will have been almost two years since Microsoft finally pulled the plug on XP support. For Vista, mainstream support from Microsoft ended in 2012, with extended support set to expire in April 2017.

For users who continue to remain on Windows XP, supported major browser choices will be reduced to Mozilla Firefox and Opera.

In September, security company Bitdefender said Windows XP was still heavily used by small and mid-sized companies, as well as public sector institutions across Eastern Europe.

Figures from Netmarketshare released earlier this month pinned XP's marketshare at approximately 12 percent, a larger marketshare than the 8 percent claimed by Windows 10.

On numbers used by Statcounter, Windows 10 has 11 percent marketshare, with XP claiming 8.21 percent and all OS X versions combining for an 8.46 percent share.

The US Navy signed a support deal in-excess of $9 million with Microsoft in June that will see Redmond provide critical hotfixes and software patches for Windows XP, Office 2003, Exchange 2003, and Server 2003 for a maximum of three years.

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