There is a fascinating post on Information Week where Dave Methvin questions whether Google’s Chrome has a corporate future or whether or not it is destined to become the playground of the geek and more adventurous web user. Dave’s article is pitched against the backdrop of Microsoft announcing that IE8 has become the biggest browser in terms of market share with 28% of Windows users logging into the net with it. Now I don’t know about you, but considering the lead Microsoft enjoyed some years back in the browser sector, I don’t think 28% is much to crow about, so where is the rest of the pie being sliced up - Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome?
There can be no doubt that in a very, very short space of time Google has lobbed a serious grenade into the pond and stunned a few of the bigger fish swimming in it. From being a simple search engine Google now is a major player in the mobile phone market, the browser market, the cloud computing sector and is starting to make waves in the operating system market.
Microsoft has demonstrated that it can survive the departure of Bill Gates and in an earlier post this week I discovered that Microsoft’s cloud computing package – Office Live – is looking good, in fact pretty smart for an early beta. One has to wonder what is gong to happen at Apple when Steve Jobs retires – will he ever? – or succumbs to mortality.
Back at Information Week Methvin continues: “How many of you are considering Google Chrome as a serious alternative for a corporate browser standard? Is FireFox in play, or is your company set on staying with Internet Explorer? Although IE has gotten better over the years, it’s still one of the least standards-compliant browsers. Does that matter to your application plans, or do you figure that if Microsoft makes it, your developers and suppliers will deal with it?”
Talking to an IT chap where I work they cannot jump top IE8 because some of the associated programs that need a browser only work with IE6! From that I can only assume that worldwide there are a lot of IT managers tearing their hair out because they are tied in to one of the most vulnerable browsers out there.
If they start to look for an alternative will they look at the likes of FireFox or Opera – probably not. Good as it is, but there have been some doubts of late, and because it comes from the Mozilla Foundation a lot of corporate procurement bods shy away from what seems to be more than a glorified charity. Faced with the likes of Google which has a strong global brand and a few dollars in the bank, then I think the bean counters would strongly prefer Google.
Google Chrome – The Browser – has been available on the open market for less than a year and its take up was largely hampered by its Spartan usability. Now that extensions have started to be added to the arsenal, I think the next 12 months will see a very different picture emerging.
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