Google Chrome’s update cycle is about to get shorter. In a post on the Chromium Blog, Google announced plans to move from the current six-week update cycle to a four-week cycle later this year:
“As we have improved our testing and release processes for Chrome, and deployed bi-weekly security updates to improve our patch gap, it became clear that we could shorten our release cycle and deliver new features more quickly. Because of this, we are excited to announce that Chrome is planning to move to releasing a new milestone every 4 weeks, starting with Chrome 94 in Q3 of 2021.”
Generally, faster updates are good for users — that should mean new features, bug fixes and security updates all arrive faster. The change may also benefit the various browsers based on Chromium, the open-source foundation of Chrome. If Chrome updates more quickly, other browsers may also pull in these changes sooner.
Along with the faster release, Google announced it would add a new ‘Extended Stable’ option that will update every ‘milestone’ updates every eight weeks and bi-weekly security updates. The option will be available for enterprise admins and “Chromium embedders.”
Chrome’s new Extended Stable option sounds a lot like Mozilla’s Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR), which rolls out major updates every couple of months but pushes out security updates regularly.
Finally, Google indicates the change could impact Chrome OS, although it doesn’t provide any detail about how beyond that the company plans to support “multiple stable release options.” We’ll likely learn more about that in the coming months.
Source: Chromium Blog Via: Android Police
