Google Chrome - the Corporate Web Browser

There seems to be vast numbers of people mistaking Google's new chrome browser as something that's designed for the open internet. It's not, it's designed to kill MSIE on corporate networks...

I've already made a post similar to this in response to Charles' blog on Chrome where, like many developers he's compared it to Safari and Firefox and wondered why Google bothered releasing Chrome. And why on earth would they make the initial release Windows only?

I'd argue that Chrome has no intention of making it big on the open internet or competing with Safari or Firefox. It's not remotely intended for home use, although I'm sure vast numbers of people will use it at home as it's such a clean and simple interface.

Google have pumped vast amounts of money in to Firefox and have worked closely with the Webkit developers to make the open internet a better, more standards compliant and open place. Every day, more and more sites drop support for MSIE6 because there's just no point in supporting such an ancient browser. As I recently found out, Internet Explorer 6 is actually older than East Timor! IE6 was 7 years old as of last month - that's a whole geological era in Internet terms!

Yet, despite the fact that it's the most despised and broken browser in existence, there are still vast numbers of people using it - on corporate networks.

This fact hurts the entire web industry - instead of fixing bugs, adding requested features and improving usability and performance, every single web developer spends around 60% of each project hacking and bodging their site or web app work in MSIE6. Don't even get me started on the self-destructive tendencies that web developers have to prolong their own pain by supporting MSIE6.

So, it's no surprise that Google, like the rest of us, want to see IE6 die pretty damn quick.

And like the rest of us, they've realised that's just not going to happen in the next decade because corporate intranets depend on IE6 - they are built for IE6 from the ground up and won't work on any other browser, including later versions of IE. Worse still, later versions of IE, including version 8, are still woefully inadequate compared to all other web browsers.

Corporate networks are stuck with IE6 for their existing browser based apps. And now they're stuck in a really hard place - Microsoft are going to make MSIE8 (currently in beta 2 release) "standards" compliant by default, guaranteeing that it won't work with all those old crappy corporate intranets.

To make matters even worse, corporates are ill served by the alternatives:

• Firefox is way to extensible and customisable to be safe to use on a corporate network
• Safari is too "Apple"
• Opera isn't enterprisey enough
• And they won't even have heard of all the other browsers out there

From a corporate IT managers' perspective, they have two choices:

• Don't upgrade anything - stick on Windows 2000 / NT and IE6 for the rest of time. But they can't do this - their old machines are breaking and being replaced with newer machines that mandate the use of Vista, etc.
• Upgrade everything - in one fail swoop. Again, this just can't be done - the disruption alone would kill the business. To make matters worse, they'd have to install Vista! Thanks Microsoft!

They can't run multiple versions of MSIE alongside each other - it's just way too painful a task and would confuse the hell out of end users.

No matter what option they choose, they're going to die a slow painful death. That's why they're putting off making a decision either way - it's the only way to prolong their survival.

Then, suddenly, just as large corporates are realising just how shafted they are thanks to their utter dependance on MSIE6 and chums, Google releases a seemingly pointless browser called Chrome.

Only I think it's far from pointless. Let's look at some facts:

• It has no feature bloat - it's trimmed back to the bear essentials, making it easier to maintain and reducing it's memory footprint to a level that's friendly for older systems
• It's super simple to use - there's no cluttered button bars and menus for users to learn, very little tech support and no training required!
• End users would struggle to break it - it's not like there are vast swathes of plugins and extensions for them to install.
• It's not marketed as a web browser - it's marketed as an interface to web applications, a web desktop.
• It's not trying to compete with MSIE, it sits along side it. It's a whole new branch of thinking for corporate intranets that allows them to install and transition to modern web apps that Microsoft struggle to understand.
• It works with all the shiny new web apps that enterprises are desperate to move, freeing them of the museum of bad software they currently have to live with.
• The multi-process architecture and JS engine performance is stable enough to allow mainstream applications to be ported to the browser
• There's a nice cartoon explaining the browser in corporate terms - any IT manager reading it will be ticking boxes and rubbing their hands together with a big smile on their face.

I bet there's even a hefty set of lock-down options to restrict which sites, plugins, etc., the browser can access.

It's perfect for a corporate environment!

So, whilst Microsoft work on their next shipment of fail - MSIE 8, including useless features like web slices rather than critical features like, oh, I don't know, a browser that actually works FFS! - Google have literally sidestepped them and offered large corporates a killer solution and a path to freedom.

Nice one Google, I think you've just provided an extremely viable solution to the MSIE problem!