Chrome targets businesses with new admin tools

 

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By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 16 Dec 2010 at 09:57

Google is looking to break into the business space with new admin tools for its Chrome browser.

While Chrome is growing in popularity, IE still dominates, especially in businesses. IE8 has the largest piece of the business pie, with a 34.1% slice globally, while IE6 still holds 10.3%, according to Net Applications.

To battle that dominance, Google has unveiled new configuration and deployment tools to make it easier for administrators to roll out Chrome.

"We’ve created an MSI installer that enables businesses who use standard deployment tools to install Chrome for all their managed users," product manager Glenn Wilson and software engineer Daniel Clifford explained in a post on the Google Enterprise blog.

"We’ve also added support for managed group policy with a list of policies and a set of templates that allow administrators to easily customise browser settings to manage security and privacy," they said.

Google also added group policy support to Chrome Frame, the plug-in that lets Chrome run applications that are still dependent on Internet Explorer. The tool could help businesses running Windows XP, as Microsoft's next browser, IE9, won't work on the ageing but still popular OS.

The new policy controls are only the first step, Google said. "We have some interesting ideas that we’re working on, including more policies to manage everything in the content settings and authentication protocols, and interesting new ways to deploy policy cross-platform," said Wilson and Clifford.