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

Posted by EditorDavid on from the edging-out-Edge dept.

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.

16 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. At least, Mozilla is socially just! by mi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Firefox losing market-share, Thunderbird increasingly abandoned, but, at least, Mozilla — after squeezing out that no-good hater — is socially just.

    Replacing the inventor of JavaScript with someone from marketing made the world a better place. Rejoice!

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    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    1. Re: At least, Mozilla is socially just! by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The inventor of JavaScript isn't someone most web devs think highly of.

    2. Re:At least, Mozilla is socially just! by Excelcia · · Score: 2

      The problem wasn't trading technical merit for moral high ground. Or at least not just that. Mozilla was quite content to simply shed technical merit for any reason at all. They saw Chrome beginning to become successful, and immediately decided to emulate the development environment. They adopted Google's rapid release and versioning method on a project that was neither technically nor culturally suited for it. They broke extensions by the truck load with that little gem, and instead of slowing down and letting the extension system catch up, their solution was to write a script that automatically scanned their extensions and just disabled the ones which hadn't caught up yet. They then went hell bent on adopting major UI changes that were demonstrably unpopular by the majority of its user base. And if alienating the extensions authors wasn't enough, many of the UI changes destroyed themes on back-to-back-to-back releases.

      All of this was in an attempt at emulating Chrome's burgeoning success. The problem is, they never figured out... you simply cannot surpass someone else by playing copycat on their methods. All they did was alienate their existing user base in favour of a product that could never be quite as good at being Chrome as Chrome was.

      Mozilla had a great browser, and a great community. Someone spooked at Chrome's early success and decided that change for change's sake was necessary, Better shoot for the stars and miss than shoot for a pile of shit and hit it, so the saying goes. From the smell of Firefox, Mozilla has been aiming low in every area for some time.

  2. chrome is spyware by goombah99 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    chrome spys on you for google's profit. use it at your peril as google no longer believes in "don't do evil", the shareholders put a stop to that.

    On top of that chrome is obnoxious in that it tends to be running processes even when you are not using. Try it on a raspberry pi 3 and you will see 14% of your precision 1GB are 3 Chromium background apps even when Chrome is not running. They use non-negligble CPU, so there not doing nothing.

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    1. Re:chrome is spyware by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      chrome spys on you for google's profit

      No it doesn't. Spying implies some form of secrecy or covert operation. Chrome collects your data for Google's profit. Calling it spying when everyone knows exactly what is happening and they are open about it is quite silly.

    2. Re:chrome is spyware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ... c) you didn't specifically close Chrome with the Exit command, but instead closed the visible windows which still allows the aforementioned background functionality to happen.

      Makes sense to me.

      Oh, hello there, Mr. 'Microsoft X (close) button doesn't rejects the Win10 upgrade'
      If I fucking close a fucking window I want the fucking program to fucking close. Just like ordinary Windows programs.

    3. Re:chrome is spyware by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 2

      Calling it spying when everyone knows exactly what is happening and they are open about it is quite silly.

      Most people probably have no idea that Chrome is collecting data at all. If they do happen to know that, they probably have no idea what exactly they are collecting anyway. I bet you couldn't tell me everything that Chrome is collecting with absolute certainty.

      If Google is so "open" about it, then there should be somewhere I can go and see a detailed list of every piece of data collected, and exactly how it is collected, with independent audits of each code release performed to ensure accuracy. But no such thing exists.

      So effectively it is still secret.

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      Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
    4. Re:chrome is spyware by UnknowingFool · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No criticizing Chrome but praising IE/Edge when they both do the same thing is called hypocrisy.

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      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    5. Re:chrome is spyware by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Most people probably have no idea that Chrome is collecting data at all.

      Hog fucking wash. Not only is it widely known to the point of almost being an internet meme, it's also a product from a company that is the largest advertising company in the world, that has user data as its primary source of income, and the installation expressly mentions on multiple occasions that Chrome collects data, Chrome sends user statistics, push this button to link Chrome to your Google account where everything is shared across all devices, etc.

  3. We're looking in the other direction already by ErikTheRed · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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    1. Re:We're looking in the other direction already by KiloByte · · Score: 3, Insightful

      More specifically, Google aims to turn Chrome into an equivalent of Windows 10, with all the joys of telemetry.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    2. Re:We're looking in the other direction already by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Google seems to have ambitions to turn Chrome browser into more of a quasi-OS platform.

      This was the original plan. When I was at University, Google came to give a recruitment speech to all the CS/EE/CE students. This was when Chrome was pretty much brand new.

      Basically they wanted to undo the advent of distributed computing and return us to the mainframe-terminal architecture. Quite literally, the guy said something along the lines of "We want your computer to just be a monitor, keyboard, and mouse."

      It was at that point I realized that you didn't have to be that smart to work at Google.

      --
      Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
  4. Windows group policy by cyber-vandal · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Windows group policy by R.Mo_Robert · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

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      R.Mo
  5. #1 because you can't escape being nagged to get it by nctritech · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  6. I don't like it... reverse it by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

    Keep a "legacy" browser to handle older sites, services and web apps, but offer another for everything else... Chrome

    I do the opposite - Chrome is my "legacy" browser thanks to its built in Flash support. But I don't use it otherwise.

    Ive been trying to minimize the amount of time I live in the Google-sphere for a few years now. My work uses Google Apps for education; but that's subject to public records requests anyway so Google could have access just like anyone else.

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    #DeleteChrome