We are pausing upcoming Chrome and Chrome OS releases
blog.chromium.org
blog.chromium.org
The focus on stability for now makes sense with a lot of people going remote.
Sounds like that's the root cause of the issue.
"Due to adjusted work schedules at this time, we are currently experiencing longer than usual review times. Please expect review times of 7 days or longer."
Like: the twenties run from 2021 to 2030, not from 2020 to 2029.
Because the year after 1 BC is 1 AD. There is no year zero. This is one of the weird things of our calendar. More about that see Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero.
So, the first millennium is from 1 to 1000, the second from 1001 to 2000 and the third from 2001 to 3000. And the twenties being the third decade start with the year 2021, and so on.
The comment is just snarky, because people have a mess with dates. Usually people start counting with one, even if mathematically starting with zero would make more sense. But hey, they make an exception for millennia, centuries and decades. They start with zero. Bravo!
In a sense this is funny. People don't usually start counting with zero. Of all things they do this for decades, however for once this is not ... applicable? useful? right?
Apparently they released some blog posts yesterday but changed their mind
Even basecamp, which is highly remote, postponed their email service launch.
I’m sure the added stress didn’t help, but I would imagine it’s more related to marketing. Do you really want to launch a new product at this time of uncertainty?
The optics are bad if you try to profit unreasonably. Launching something to help people become more productive, and making reasonable money out of it doesn't have bad optics.
I don't mind naming one particularly gross one - Knightscope is busy spamming about how "Security robots are immune from disease and work 24/7". I'm sure they practiced defensive patter about resilience until they could say it without smirking.
We techies are some of the ones best positioned to keep the economy going. No need to physically travel, can remote access resources, and the ability to value generation engines. In the information economy, we absolutely need to do our part. That should be what we take away from this tragedy.
I find it harder to believe that google is not equipped for remote work than somewhere like Ubisoft (where I work) which is having serious pain as testing games over RDP is bandwidth heavy and horribly laggy.
And we’re not pushing any releases as far as I’m aware.
disclaimer: I am a Googler, but know nothing about how the Chrome team operates
I thought that Google were all-in on BeyondCorp, which doesn't require a secure perimetre. Did they not actually convert everything, or is it still in progress?
(edit: removed a non-constructive suggestion)
I used to work in Techstop, I wonder how crazy of a time that team is having right now. But I wouldn’t call them an obstacle.
I don't understand Google's decision here - I wish they simply predicted a longer than normal release cadence, versus none at all
"Please test this build of Chrome on these 1000 various models of android phones" sounds kinda hard to automate.
Even if you had automated it, you'd probably still need someone in the office to poke hardware that locked up, etc.
I wouldn't be surprised if even the best of those systems requires some human supervision.
https://firebase.google.com/docs/test-lab/
As do many others:
Edit to add: this also has a follow-on effect of reducing the possibility that end users experience problems due to breaking changes or bugs, which is also important considering nearly everyone is depending on the internet at this time.
Like I said in my previous comment, the newly remote Chrome team may be facing many unseen roadblocks, but I expect that to be a temporal window of delay, after which the team should resume shipping, albeit at a slower cadence due to reduced productivity compared to normal-times WFH.
Whilst I love NFC API, it's not critical at this moment where as ensure there are no (or as rew as possible) regressions is.
Wrapping up, it's a massive mix of needs right now from our own teams and users alike.
Sure, but that impact might be somewhat more... impactful right now. This isn't that difficult. If you're a FB user, you probably saw last night nearly all of your friends reporting that their posts were being flagged as spam yesterday. That's because a bunch of people were sent home and the automated system took over. Staffs are being sent home and their ability to work effectively is reduced. The prospect of breaking changes and new bugs in the world's most popular web browser could put more strain on already strained teams that are struggling to keep up with both their current working environment and new challenges as they respond to the public health crisis. Removing that as a factor is a net benefit for those teams and for all of their users.
It's reasonable to not understand their decision, but it's also reasonable to give them the benefit of the doubt that they know what's best for their team and product (and in that order).
Googlers (like myself) are probably the least materially affected by COVID-19. We are well compensated and most aren't living paycheck to paycheck. We have great medical benefits. Our schedules are flexible and working from home is fairly feasible for most teams. Many are young enough to not have kids, or compensated well-enough to have a stay-at-home partner.
And technically, for many of us, working from home is fairly straightforward. Google already has much of that infrastructure in place. Many teams are already distributed across sites and used to working over email and VC. We all have laptops, etc. Some of us work on open source where it's trivial to have full access to source code when not on the corporate network.
Even so, my rough estimate is that my team is about 30% less effective right now. Like you say, it's not because working from home is hard. It's because staying focused on code during a global pandemic that will kill unknown people, is causing massive suffering for people who aren't as fortunate as we Googlers, and may lead to a depression the likes of which haven't been seen in a hundred years is really hard.
We're all trying to survive a monumentally catastrophic event with our health and wits intact the best way we know how. The history books are going to write about how millions low-risk young people self-quarantined to protect the older generation. They will remember the states and countries that suspended evictions and mortgages.
No one's going to give a damn that Chrome skipped a release or two. At the scale of shit the world is dealing with right now, it just doesn't matter.
There are different ways to cope with adversity. The "Keep calm and carry on" method is a contrasting formula, which applied to Chrome, would see maybe one release versus three or four, even in the midst of an adversity.
As much ubiquitous suffering as there is currently, the comfort of at least a (slower than usual) browser release can be a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak horizon. Heck, if my browser won't even update, forget fixing a massively multivariate system/problem like public health, or the economy.
Your/Google's self awareness of privilege is much appreciated. But if you really want to make a difference, a slower release cadence is much more uplifting than resigning to the virus.
I prefer 100% WFH to that, but I dislike not going to the office at all. This is my first time being 100% WFH for this long -- my previous max was a full week.
I'm interested in knowing if halting updates for a browser mean much to real world users?
Less change for the sake of change is a good thin IMO