Listen to this article
Google announced earlier this week pausing Chrome and Chrome OS release to manage its rescheduled work as a result of the coronavirus epidemic. Google developers have also stopped releasing new versions of Chrome and Chrome OS. They pointed out the fact as many are working remotely and the Chromium team is well dedicated to developing future releases of Chrome browser and OS. The team is initially focusing on confirming the current version 80 is secure and stable. The update doesn’t specifically reference Chrome OS but the original post does refer back to the announcement. It is noteworthy that there hasn’t been an official statement on how long Chrome releases will be paused.
Most experts believe Google developers will be skipping at least one milestone version. The Chromium Dev Group announcement covered the initial pause of Chrome releases in an update. Technical Program Management Director of Chrome, Jason Kersey also shared the news and confirmed the M82 development was being dropped. The company has decided to drop current M82 branches, stop testing/merges to the branches, and remove infra support. The social giant will not push any new M82 releases to Dev and will stop stabilization for Beta. It indicates M83 will contain the majority of features we were expecting in M82. This decision will keep the Chrome and Chrome OS release closer to its original schedule.
The pause should have little bearing on the features and updates that arrive when the delay is over at the end. Moreover, the Dev channel of Chrome and Chrome OS will be making the move to version 83 during the coming week. The company said that it would work to ensure current releases are as stable as possible. A few days ago, Chrome Unboxed also pointed out a post explaining the new plan is to entirely skip a milestone release. Kersey wrote in a post the beta channel will remain on version M81 until 83 is ready to promote from the development channel. The 82 will entirely skip its cycle through the process. It indicates an earlier release date than planned for version 83.
