Technology and Science08 September, 20262 min read
Google Launches Chrome 153 With Two-Week Update Cycle, Starting Desktop, Android, and iOS
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Chrome 153 launches: official start of biweekly release cadence for desktop, Android, and iOS. New two-week cycle aims to close vulnerability gaps amid AI threats.
6 outlets told this the same way.
Chrome ships faster cadence
Google has begun releasing updates to its Chrome browser every two weeks rather than the previous four weeks, starting with the Tuesday launch of Chrome 153 on Desktop, Android and iOS.
The new schedule continues with the planned Sept. 22 Stable release of Chrome 154, and Google said the two-week cycle began with the Tuesday launch of Chrome 153 on Desktop, Android and iOS.
Google said the shift builds on the predictable release cadence it began in 2010 and the four-week release cycle the company began in 2021.
In explaining the change, Google Senior Technical Program Manager Ben Mason and Distinguished Engineer and Senior Director Deepak Ravichandran said, "By shifting to a two-week release cycle today, we are once again raising the bar for browser delivery and security."
N-day patch gap focus
Google linked the faster cadence to security strategy in the AI era, saying that "With automated AI discovery tools and community bug reports generating higher patch volume, shorter release cycles make managing security fixes significantly simpler." In a July 30 blog post, Google described N-day attacks as those in which attackers reverse engineer bugs when the fix becomes visible in the public open-source codebase, so they can exploit those bugs before the fix reaches users’ machines.
TechCrunch said the shift to faster releases is tied to Chrome’s evolving security strategy in the AI era, and that a shorter release cycle makes it easier to manage security fixes. TechCrunch also said faster-moving threats can be better addressed by shrinking the window between landing a fix in the public codebase and getting that fix to end users, keeping the "N-day" patch gap as small as possible.
Industry ripple and features
Google said the two-week release cycle also helps it ship browser features faster, and it described that benefit as part of the same effort to narrow the security patch gap. TechCrunch reported that while OpenAI’s web browser, ChatGPT Atlas, has been shut down, there are still plenty of other alternative browsers looking to carve out a piece of Chrome’s market for themselves, including Brave, Dia, Opera Neon, Perplexity’s Comet, DuckDuckGo’s browser, and more.
TechCrunch added that Google is experimenting with adding more AI features to Chrome and then rapidly iterating on those additions, which it said demands faster updates. In the same framing, PYMNTS said Google’s two-week cycle is designed to set a standard that many across the web ecosystem are also adopting, naming Microsoft, Mozilla, and Brave.