Posted on Tuesday, February 25 2014 @ 13:00 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
The Register
reports a number of Chinese web giants will cooperate to protect the millions of Chinese Internet users that still run Windows XP. According to the report, messaging giant Tencent, search engine Sogou, software company Kingsoft and several others will provide technical support, system upgrades and security services for Windows XP after Microsoft pulls the plug on Windows XP's support on April 8th. The plan is to protect users for at least the next two or three years.
This so-called “hedge” against attack will be built before the April 8 XP shutdown date and could last even longer than three years if large numbers of Chinese users still haven’t transitioned to another OS by then.
This could take some time. At the end of 2013, Windows XP still had a market share of around 50 per cent in China. In fact, there have even been reports that the Chinese government has tried to intervene by persuading Redmond to continue support for the legacy OS.
