Making the browser run on many OSs cost money and complicates the source code, or if you code for the least common denominators, does not allow to use advanced functions. Testing the Browser on many OSs costs money, if the browser fails, the bad publicity could cost millions. Google joining 0patch to "keep the dream alive" for Win7? It tends to be limited to enumeration of ideological predispositions /w people saying x is hard in abstract terms never in terms o What is always missing from these discussions is objective evidence based information.
It's interesting to me people can create cross platform browsers that work across radically different operating systems with completely different technology stacks yet the thing that is "surprisingly difficult" is the presence of new APIs in a highly backwards compatible operating environment. The new APIs tend to enable things people need (better security) or want (enhanced multimedia.) Refusing to use the new stuff will have people asking "why can't your program do X" and using them means you need to stub out or reimplement the features if you want to keep working in older OSs. New features mean new APIs that aren't supported in older versions. New features get added to OSs all the time even if the base API doesn't change much. They could probably be made to work, but keeping modern internet-connected programs working on older operating systems is surprisingly difficult.
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