Is there a life expectancy to Chrome on a Desktop computer

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I am inquiring to know if there’s a life expectancy of the Chrome web browser for updates and whatnot on my Desktop Computer like a Chromebook has? If so, is there a way to export my bookmarks into Windows Edge? I believe that is the newest version. I have learned that eventually my updates in my Chromebook have an end date of around 6 years or so. If that is also an eventuality, would I be better off running Edge on my Chromebook? If that is possible.

 

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

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Rush2112 wrote:

I am inquiring to know if there’s a life expectancy of the Chrome web browser for updates

Unless you block Chrome browser updates the browser auto-update to new versions according to channel (Stable, Beta, Nightly/Dev).

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I haven’t blocked Chrome from updating on my Desktop computer. Nor do I know how to block it from updating. I am sure it wouldn’t be difficult to figure out though. As far as my Chromebook is concerned, I read that there is an end date for updates. Is this true?

The reason why I asked my first question. Is I want to sign up for paperless statements from my bank’s Credit Card and it currently doesn’t support the Chrome browser. I may have to invest in a laptop and use the Edge web browser. I already have a Desktop computer that uses Chrome. I could keep the Chromebook as is and not get a laptop and just convert my Desktop computer over to Edge. But am I able to export my bookmarks from Chrome to Edge without loosing my current bookmarks in Chrome so I can still use my Chromebook.

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Chromebooks do have an ‘end of updates’ time frame, yes. Google says that they now receive regular updates for a minimum of six and a half years from when their chipset first appeared on the platform. (They used to get five years of updates.)

I have an Acer Chromebook that recently hit the ‘end of updates’ mark. It’s still a decent machine (for what it is), so I used something called CloudReady to install a sort of generic Chromium OS which does get security updates.

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Here’s how to import your Chrome settings to Edge (note, does not remove them from Chrome.)

1. Open Edge and click the Favorites icon on the right.
2. Open the “More options” menu (the 3 dots located between the Search and Pin icons)
3. Select “Import favorites” in the drop-down menu.
4. Select Google Chrome in the “Import from” drop-down.
5. If you have more than one Profile, select the one you want import to.
6. Select the specific items you want to import (warning, the default is everything checked.)
7. Click the “Import” button at the bottom.

That’s it, everything you selected to import from Chrome will now be available in Edge.

BTW, if your particular Chromebook can install and run Android apps from Google Play, there’s now a Microsoft Edge for Android app available there.

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Chrome and Edge use mostly the same underlying code (Chromium) so if Chrome stops support for your hardware, edge will likely too. The most recent change I know of is dropping support for processors that don’t support SSE3 (Intel’s “Prescott” Pentium 4 around 2004 was their 1st to support SSE3, and AMD processors added it around 2005). At a future date, Chrome will move to require “SSSE3” (supplemental SSE3), which was added in Core 2 for Intel (around 2006/7) and Bulldozer for AMD (around 2011).

Unless you have a 10+ year old processor, it’s more likely Chromium support for your computer will end due to ending support for the version of Windows on it. Chrome states they support Windows 7 until at least January 2022 ( https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7100626?hl=en ), so it the same is applied to Windows 10 (EOL+2 years), Chrome would end Windows 10 support around 2027.

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It’s not just Chrome, the browser, that will go out of support when the EOL date for your Chromebook is reached. It’s the whole Chromebook that won’t get updates anymore, including the OS (Chrome OS).

If you want to keep the Chromebook up to date, you will probably have to seek out and install a new operating system. I have heard of some people putting Linux on Chromebooks, and @Seattle27 already mentioned using an OS derived from Chromium OS (which is also considered a Linux distro by the Free Software Foundation), like CloudReady.

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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