Google announced today that it will shorten Chrome’s release schedule from six weeks to four weeks.
“For more than a decade, Chrome has delivered a new milestone every 6 weeks, providing security, stability, speed and simplicity to our users and the web,” writes Alex Mineer of Google. “As we improved our testing and release processes for Chrome and deployed fortnightly security updates to improve our patch gap, it became clear that we could shorten our release cycle and deliver new features more quickly. As a result, we are pleased to announce that Chrome is planning to launch a new milestone every 4 weeks, starting with Chrome 94 in the third quarter of 2021. ”
Google is also adding what it calls the Extended Stable option, which will provide milestone updates every 8 weeks. This will be available to corporate administrators and Chromium incorporators who need more time to manage updates, says Google.
And this change will affect Chrome OS as well, although Google is being a little vague in the details.
“For Chrome OS users, we also plan to support several stable version options,” says Mineer. “We’ll have more to share with Chrome OS administrators in the coming months about the options you’ll have for milestone updates for your managed devices.”
Naturally, someone wonders whether Microsoft will switch to a four-week release schedule for the Chromium-based Edge browser or stick to the current six-week schedule. No word on that yet.