Google Will Skip Chrome 82 Due to Coronavirus, Will Release Chrome 83 instead

As you may already know, Google has changed Chrome's release schedule due to the ongoing Coronavirus crisis. Also, the company today announced that they are skipping Chrome 82, will instead release Chrome 83 later.

The announcement says:

This is an update on our earlier decision to pause our branch and release schedule. As we adapt our future milestone schedules to the current change in schedule, we have decided to skip the M82 release to ensure we keep users safe and focus all efforts on maintaining stability.

Here are some of the immediate actions based on the above decision:

• We will abandon current M82 branches, remove infra support, and stop testing/merges to the branches

• We will not push any new M82 releases to Dev, and we will stop stabilization for Beta

• We will move Dev channel to M83 asap

• We will keep Beta channel on M81 until M83 is ready to be promoted 

Once M81 is cleared to release to Stable, we expect to adjust our future milestone schedules, including possibility shifting M83 forward to target an earlier branch and Stable date.  

With the above changes, we will continue to focus on keeping the trunk/master healthy. Please continue supporting and helping on tasks associated with that goal. There are no changes to the existing requests to land safe changes, and avoid risk.

We expect to provide another update next week around our anticipated next steps and timing around releasing M81, and branching for M83. Thanks again for your patience and support.

This means the following:

• new features will go to the Chrome 83 branch
• Chrome 81 will remain in Beta until Chrome 83 will get ready for beta-testing, and then it will be released to the stable branch.

The release of Chrome 82 was scheduled to April 28, 2020, and Chrome 83 was expected to reach the public on June 9, 2020. Now the exact dates are not known.