They are patching most of Windows XP as we speak. And not just for customers in the special extended support program. They are pacthing POSReady 2009 until 09/04/2019, and that's really a streamlined XP Pro with very slight differences, as most (not all) of the patches in POSReady won't cause any problems in a regular XP installation and it has "XP Professional" strings everywhere.
They simply decided that it was time to end support for regular customers and moved on.
They also removed most of the XP patches in the Microsoft Download Center a few months ago. I don't understand why they had all of them there for two years after support ended and suddenly they were gone without notice. Microsoft used to be more friendly, at least you could get their old files from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/. Not anymore. BTW, this helped in my decision to start migration from their ecosystem after 20 years of Registry tweaking.
They simply decided that it was time to end support for regular customers and moved on.
They also removed most of the XP patches in the Microsoft Download Center a few months ago. I don't understand why they had all of them there for two years after support ended and suddenly they were gone without notice. Microsoft used to be more friendly, at least you could get their old files from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/. Not anymore. BTW, this helped in my decision to start migration from their ecosystem after 20 years of Registry tweaking.