Google accelerates the release of new major updates

Mar 5, 2021 17:34 GMT  ·  By

Google is following in the footsteps of Mozilla and is moving Chrome browser to a four-week release cycle, thus promising to ship major updates at a fast pace than before.

At this point, Google Chrome receives a major update every 6 weeks, but the company says that it has managed to shorten the release cycle, thus allowing users to get new features much faster.

So starting with Chrome 94, which is due to go live in the third quarter of this year, Google would begin rolling out major browser updates every four weeks on all supported platforms.

Google says it’s also adding an Extended Stable version of Google Chrome that would be updated every 8 weeks, all with the purpose of making it easier for IT admins to update the browser running on devices in their networks.

“We will add a new Extended Stable option, with milestone updates every 8 weeks. Extended Stable will be available to enterprise administrators and Chromium embedders who need additional time to manage updates. Security updates on Extended Stable will be released every two weeks to fix important issues, but those updates won’t contain new features or all security fixes that the 4 week option will receive,” Google explains in an announcement this week.

7 in 10 PCs out there run Google Chrome

Google Chrome is currently the world’s number one browser, with third-party statistics indicating it’s already running on some 70 percent of the PCs out there.

In other words, 7 in 10 PCs are currently running Google Chrome, despite originally coming with another browser (Microsoft Edge on Windows and Safari on macOS), so the accelerated release pace is likely to be good news for quite a lot of users.

Chrome OS users, on the other hand, will benefit from support for multiple stable release options, but Google says additional information in this regard would be shared at a later time.