And who knows, maybe they still plan on putting HEVC support in their release notes at some point.

My "new features in this update" section is often 6+ months delayed - as in I will have had access to a feature for 6+ months before seeing it in Chrome release notes.

Chrome does not have release notes. The blog post only mentions CVE fixes and points you to Git logs for the rest of the work. Only a tiny number of new Chrome features (out of the thousands of changes and bug fixes done in every release) get further marketing treatment, and they are obviously going to focus on those directly relevant for users over a new video codec. Just because they didn't call out the change anywhere doesn't mean they are being secretive about it, as the title wants to imply.

Exactly. IDK how people can use Google software. You never know when they will quietly inserts some spyware or adware into their so called open source software.