Even For Businesses, Chrome Is The Top Browser (computerworld.com)

An anonymous reader shares Computerworld's interview with David Michael Smith of Gartner. "Most enterprises still have a 'standard' browser, and most of the time, that's something from Microsoft. These days it's IE11. But we've found that people actually use Chrome more than IE... It's the most-used browser in enterprise," he said... IE retains a sizable share -- Smith called it "a significant presence" -- largely because it's still required in most companies. "There are a lot of [enterprise] applications that only work in IE, because [those apps] use plug-ins," Smith said, ticking off examples like Adobe Flash, Java and Microsoft's own Silverlight. "Anything that requires an ActiveX control needs IE."

Many businesses have adopted the two-prong strategy that Gartner and others began recommending years ago: Keep a "legacy" browser to handle older sites, services and web apps, but offer another for everything else... Chrome, said Smith, is now the "overwhelming choice" as the modern enterprise browser... Smith wasn't optimistic that Edge would supplant Chrome, even when Windows 10 is widely deployed on corporate computers in the next few years. "Edge certainly will have opportunities" once Windows 10 is the enterprise-standard OS, "but I would say that Chrome has a lot of momentum, largely for the fact that it is so popular on the internet."
While a year ago Chrome and Microsoft's browsers both held 41% of the browser market share, now Chrome holds 59% to just 24% for both IE and Edge combined.

Comments

We're looking in the other direction already

[ErikTheRed]

We initially adopted Chrome back when it was exciting, fast, and standards-obsessive. These days... Google seems to have ambitions to turn Chrome browser into more of a quasi-OS platform. More importantly, it is a platform that is somewhere between difficult and impossible to manage to the degree that we would like to. These days the web is integrating more and more active (executable) content into sites, as opposed to passive content that is displayed with limited interaction. More execution = more attack surface, more difficulty to sandbox properly, etc. I'm not saying we need to go back to active content being limited to 1990s-style tags, but Google seems to be rushing ahead with "what can we do?" versus considering "what should we do?" A happy medium would be to allow end-users and administrators to choose where on the spectrum of bleeding edge (pun intended) content we want to deal with, but that doesn't appear to be in the cards. Additionally, it's not like it's an even remotely acceptable option to not update your browser so what Google (or Microsoft or Mozilla or Apple) inflict on us sticks.

#1 because you can't escape being nagged to get it

[nctritech]

Chrome isn't #1 because it's a good browser. It's #1 because google.com and a thousand other websites nag you to install it. Avast Antivirus nags you to install it on every big update and the box is checked by default. Tons of software installers try to hoist a Chrome and/or Google Toolbar on you and the boxes are checked by default. Google has paid off millions of people to thrust Chrome in your face at every turn and try to install it and force it to be the default browser without you noticing that it's happened.

Chrome is big because you have to actively resist installing and keeping it at this point. Chrome does not deserve its market share; it is not organic, it is bought and paid for.

Re:Windows group policy

[R.Mo_Robert]

How controllable is Chrome by group policy? It's good to be able to lock regular users out of the settings and developer tools but grant certain access to those that need it.

Very. There are Administrative Templates available from Google and you can use them to create GPOs that either set computer/user policies (not changeable by user) or default user preferences (changeable). I've used the former to prevent installation of extensions and whatnot and the latter to configure homepages. Disabling developer mode is another thing you can do. I'm not sure if there's an item to disable user access to Settings (maybe you could blacklist chrome://settings?), but I think a better option for most cases would be to enable GPO items that will configure as policies specific settings you don't want the users to change.