When Google first launched Chrome for Android in early February 2012, it wanted to to give Android 4.0 users a better mobile browsing experience. The app has received a lot of updates since then and will continue to get them in the future, but users still on Ice Cream Sandwich won’t.
Google has announced that Chrome 42 will be the last updated that folks on Android 4.0 will get. The company explains that it’s getting increasingly difficult to develop features and include support for the three-and-a-half year old OS. And since the number of Chrome users on ICS have dropped by 30 percent in the past year, Google has decided that it’s time to stop including support for Android 4.0 in future Chrome releases.
It’s always kind of a bummer to see support for older OSes cut out of significant apps like Chrome. That said, Ice Cream Sandwich is getting pretty old at this point, and considering that the length of the U.S. phone contract is typically two years, it’s likely that most folks have moved on from ICS to a newer version of Android. It’s also worth noting that Chrome 42 will continue to work on Android 4.0 even though they won’t get any more Chrome updates.