Google's John Mueller was asked on Twitter about Google's plans to upgrading their crawling to better support GoogleBot as Chrome 41. Basically giving GoogleBot the ability to crawl modern sites and JavaScript better. John said, don't wait for Google to change - you should deploy sites that work with what GoogleBot currently supports.
The specific question was:
At I/O 2018 you specified making Googlebot closer to modern chrome. My site is not getting properly indexed as it's not compatible with Chrome 41. Should I make it backwards compatible or wait for Googlebot to become modern? Insights will help me take the right decision.
John responded:
I'd recommend making it work with the status quo, rather than waiting for bigger changes, if you care for search.
I'd recommend making it work with the status quo, rather than waiting for bigger changes, if you care for search.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) December 26, 2018
Good advice for pretty much everything in life also.
Forum discussion at Twitter.