Chrome

Google to resume Chrome releases on April 7

The company will roll out version 81, skip 82, and launch version 83 in May to make up for lost time

Google today said it will resume Chrome releases in two weeks and plans to make good on the multi-week suspension by skipping a version.

Chrome 81, the upgrade that was previously slated for a March 17 debut, will instead launch in two weeks, on April 7.

In the meantime, Chrome 80 will receive at least one more update - at some point next week, Google said - with fixes for vulnerabilities and what the search firm called "critical" issues. Releases of the Beta, Dev and Canary channels, which contain builds of decreasing polish and stability, either have already resumed or will this week.

On March 10, for example, Google recommended that all North American employees work from home. Later, Santa Clara County, where Google's HQ is located, was one of several that told residents to "shelter-in-place."

Chrome 82 was canceled by Google to make up for the time lost by the suspension. That upgrade was to appear April 28.

Instead, the features and other work done on Chrome 82 during its stretches in the Dev and Beta channels will be rolled into Chrome 83, now slated to launch May 19. That's three weeks earlier than its original June 9 date.

Although the Edge team had not made a similar announcement Thursday as of 2:30 p.m. ET, Microsoft will resume Edge releases at some point, probably on a cadence similar to Chrome's.