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We are pausing upcoming Chrome and Chrome OS releases
- mrtweetyhack 7y agoAll of a sudden, it doesn't connect to the internet anymore. Happened a few times already. Good reason to go back to firefox
- czechdeveloper 7y agoI wonder, if people just stopped working or moved on some covid related project?
- nkozyra 7y agoI'm sure that's part of it but going remote also introduces a ton a workflow impediments as the team adjusts.
- dijit 7y agoAt google? 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.
- luckydata 7y agoRemote work is one thing, working with kids at home because daycare is closed, not being able to lead a normal life, people getting sick... that's a completely different matter.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rcfw 7y agoThere are a lot of obstacles for temps/contractors to gain remote access at google. I'd imagine a lot of testing is done by people who aren't FTEs. disclaimer: I am a Googler, but know nothing about how the Chrome team operates
- zeveb 7y ago> There are a lot of obstacles for temps/contractors to gain remote access at google. 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)
- hanse00 7y agoOne man’s obstacle is another man’s security measure :) 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.
- cameronbrown 7y agoTechstop and CorpEng have been absolutely amazing through this situation -- I wish them them the best.
- mpalmer 7y agoI believe major releases are blocked because much of the QA staff isn't authorized to access key systems remotely.
- londons_explore 7y agoA project like Chrome, where there is no super high value source code, shouldn't really be having this issue...
- est31 7y agoChrome runs with user privileges on billions of computers. The impact of someone hacking the software delivery chain and inserting malware is enourmous, let alone the risk for the brand/user trust. And don't forget that Chrome is not a charity project, but meant to secure Google's search and adtech monopoly. They actually pay a lot of money for Firefox to ship their search engine as default, and that's for a tiny market share.
- kinlan 7y agoThe blog post is pretty accurate. I know it seems pretty general, but nearly the entire team is working remote and at the same time it's not prudent to push change on the ecosystem when everyone is trying to keep their site running.
- airstrike 7y ago2020: the year that did not exist
- escapecharacter 7y agoCivilization deserves a gap year tbh
- Aaronstotle 7y agoI joked with my friend a few weeks ago that B.C. would stand for before Corona/Covid. Unfortunately, it looks like it's not as much of a joke and the impacts of it are only starting to become clear, I hope we can learn from it so if there's another pandemic we can react much faster.
- ksec 7y agoThat is a good joke :) I will steal that.
- ithkuil 7y agoA Novel Leap Year
- microtherion 7y agoThere is an ancient tradition of Sabbath Years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmita
- Fiveplus 7y agoAre there any known security loopholes in the issues pipeline that are yet to be addressed? I'm interested in knowing if halting updates for a browser mean much to real world users?
- bla3 7y agoIt sounds like they're still pushing security updates.
- kinlan 7y agoYep. We will still be pushing critical updates.
- __s 7y ago> We’ll continue to prioritize any updates related to security, which will be included in Chrome 80.
- robotnikman 7y agosounds like they will be prioritizing security issues. Less change for the sake of change is a good thin IMO
- yingw787 7y agoI hope that Google and other companies will encourage remote teams and divisions after this event. Having the ability for some teams to primarily work from home might provide some hermetic guarantee of continued development and liveness during a time of crisis.
- enitihas 7y agoI don't think this is similar to normal remote work though. Schools are closed, so people can't work on home in isolation. On top of that people must be anxious. When people are worried about lots of other stuff their output may not be the same. Even basecamp, which is highly remote, postponed their email service launch.
- gingerlime 7y ago> 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?
- enitihas 7y agoConsidering that it was an email service, focused on making async communication better, one would think right now might be a pretty good time when a large number of people are working from home.
- dickeytk 7y agostrategically perhaps, but the optics on that are so awful. I'd argue it's the wrong thing to do if you thought you'd be more profitable in a crisis.
- enitihas 7y agoIt's not about being profitable. They could even maybe launch it below cost and that might help people even if it costs them. The parent talked about marketing. And people using something and benefitting from it, and then recommending to others is probably one of the best forms of it. 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.
- dickeytk 7y agoWithout knowing much about the team I really doubt this has much to do with remote work. It seems like a smart move to take pressure off team deliverables in general right now for a host of reasons.
- kinlan 7y agoIt's a mix of many things. Our teams all working remote for the first time and dealing with the same issues all people are dealing with. And then also at the same time if we put pressure on external developers with breaking changes or new bugs then it doesn't seem the right thing to do for users and developers at this time.
- LanceH 7y agoLocal schools are leaning heavily on chromebooks. They have checked them out to students without computers. Adding an os update to this would contribute to the chaos.
- enneff 7y agoOS updates on ChromeOS are seamless and mostly go unnoticed by the user, FWIW.
- tedunangst 7y agoExcept when they move the launch bar from here to there or hide scrollbars or make any of a million other changes that cause your screen to no longer resemble the screenshot you're trying to learn from.
- LanceH 7y agoI updated a couple weeks ago and every tab was discarded when I tabbed away, reloaded when I tabbed back. It's better now. I can only imagine the problems that would cause for a school with a couple hundred of these checked out.
- throwGuardian 7y agoRemote work now is likely lower in productivity than normal-times WFH. If a software company cannot adjust to remote delivery, albeit at lower than normal productivity, the rest of the economy has no hope. I don't understand Google's decision here - I wish they simply predicted a longer than normal release cadence, versus none at all
- londons_explore 7y agoPerhaps because some testing needs to be done on physical devices in a real lab? "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.
- Symbiote 7y agoI don't know what Google use, but a friend worked on a system some years ago that used a robotic "finger" to press on a phone touchscreen, for testing. This was for a mobile phone company (pre-Android/iPhone) to check their OS worked. I wouldn't be surprised if even the best of those systems requires some human supervision.
- kube-system 7y agoThey already have that problem solved: https://firebase.google.com/docs/test-lab/ https://firebase.google.com/docs/test-lab/ As do many others: https://aws.amazon.com/device-farm/ https://aws.amazon.com/device-farm/ https://appcenter.ms/ https://appcenter.ms/ https://kobiton.com/ https://kobiton.com/ https://www.perfecto.io/ https://www.perfecto.io/ https://saucelabs.com/solutions/live-testing https://saucelabs.com/solutions/live-testing
- eyelidlessness 7y agoThey're also considering the impact on developers targeting Chrome and Chrome OS platforms[1], which is a welcome consideration. 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. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22620254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22620254
- rvz 7y ago2020 has been cancelled. A false start to the new decade.
- EdwardDiego 7y agoGuess the "decades run from 1 to 10, not 0 to 9" people won that argument.
- nixpulvis 7y ago2010?
- _nalply 7y ago> Guess the "decades run from 1 to 10, not 0 to 9" people won that argument. 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 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?
- EdwardDiego 7y agoNot snarky at all - an attempt at an humorous aside. I thought about trying to tie it to Lua / Erlang / Julia coders vs. C / .NET / Java etc., but thought that a bit of a stretch. :)
- khana 7y agoGood. Stay on sabatical.
- jontro 7y agoGoogle Play Store app publishing is delayed as well. Currently the message says: "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."
- JCharante 7y agoI wonder how this will impact educational apps that are trying to get last minute features for use in environments with a teacher. I know drops is trying to roll out an update at the moment.
- afrcnc 7y agoMore on this: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-pauses-chrome-and-chrome-os-releases-due-to-coronavirus-outbreak/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-pauses-chrome-and-chrom... Apparently they released some blog posts yesterday but changed their mind
- notokay 7y agoFinally, good news.