What is considered a modern browser? Not IE7 according to Google

This may be old news, but today I received a Request for Proposal (RFP) for website redesign where they required that the new website support all modern browsers, including IE7. I thought that I had read sometime about a year ago about Google discontinuing their support for older browsers including Explorer 7 (IE7). So, according to Google, IE7 is and has been, an older browser and they aren’t going to waste time or money making their new products backwards compatible. This is interesting since many educational institutions and government agencies only recently upgraded to IE7 from IE6 this past year. So, who is the authority on what is a modern browser versus an older browser?