Google Chrome Drops Support for 32-bit Linux
Not long ago, Google announced that its Chrome browser would drop support for Windows XP, Vista and older versions of OS X. Now, Google has announced that the Chrome browser for 32-bit Linux will stop receiving updates and security fixes in March 2016.
To provide the best experience for the most-used Linux versions, we will end support for Google Chrome on 32-bit Linux, Ubuntu Precise (12.04), and Debian 7 (wheezy) in early March, 2016. Chrome will continue to function on these platforms but will no longer receive updates and security fixes.
We intend to continue supporting the 32-bit build configurations on Linux to support building Chromium.
The above statement was made by Dirk Pranke who is a software engineer at Google. As mentioned in the statement, Chromium will continue to work for 32-bit builds of Linux. Chromium is the open source project that Google Chrome is built upon. As such, the open source browser will continue to work for 32-bit Linux, whereas the Google browser will not.
This appears to be one of many examples where Google drops support for older software, presumably to gain more flexibility when developing its products.