VB6/COM Still declining in popularity

I just had a customer ask me about the future of COM support on Windows.  Here is how I responded

Someone mentioned they had heard the VB6 runtime will not be supported beyond Windows10 (2025?).  I could not find any official word on that.  But I know there is no support statement for VB6 on Windows 11 -- but that is not an official Windows release yet, so...  

One thing: COM is a typically 32-bit technology and special steps are needed to work on 64-bit.  On 64bit, which is what most Windows installations are running any more, COM must run in a 32-bit emulation.  Maybe you have noticed VB6 COM references need to be to files in the SysWOW64 folder, not the System32 folder... 

Bottom line, VB6 and COM may be officially supported by Microsoft, but they are not mainstream anymore.  As time goes on, you are more likely to run into difficult issues with them; you will find yourself in troubled waters, in a boat by yourself without a paddle... And more importantly, all VB6 programmers will eventually leave the labor pool.  Organizations still running VB6 will have no one to go to for help when they have technical problems.  Organizations may choose to bear that risk and continue to put out VB6/COM compatibility fires as they come up, or they can upgrade their systems and join the much larger community of .NET/C# developers on a vital, well-supported platform. 

To give you an idea about the level of interest in VB6 vs C# here are some relevant metrics:

Google Search (June 2021)

GitHub (Jan 2022)

Here are some details on VB6 support from Microsoft.  
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/visual-basic-6/visual-basic-6-support-policy