Google Chrome is reportedly checking whether your Windows 10 PC can be upgraded to Windows 11

With only three months left on the clock for Windows 10 support, it seems Google's Chrome browser is now peeking at whether PCs running the older Microsoft operating system are eligible to upgrade to Windows 11.

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Yes, Windows Latest picked up on Google's Chromium commit outlining this capability, which reads: "Adding a metric for determining Win11 upgrade eligibility. This metric is recorded at startup for Chrome running on Win10. Records a boolean histogram that represents if the hardware is capable of being upgraded to Win11."

According to Windows Latest's detective work, this change is already live in the web browser.

The data Google is using here is anonymized, as you'd expect, but still - what business has the company got in determining whether or not your PC is actually capable of being upgraded to Windows 11?

Well, clearly the ability to work out the potential number of upgraders, and conversely those who will be stuck on Windows 10 for good (unless they buy a new machine), is going to be handy to know for Google in terms of figuring out how long Chrome might have to support Windows 10.

It's not really surprising that Google is thinking about this given that Windows 10 is set to run out of support in October 2025.

Of course, this time round, there may well be a lot more folks sticking with an outdated OS, because there's an option for consumers to pay for extended support and an extra year of updates.

Indeed, you don't even have to pay if you're willing to sync your PC settings to the cloud (not all your files - just settings) using the Windows Backup app, as that's an alternative option recently added by Microsoft.