Google browser targets federal market
Google steps up pressure on Microsoft
- By Kathleen Hickey
- Jun 01, 2010
Google is subtly increasing pressure on Microsoft with a new
release of its Chrome browser. Government employees may now have a new
alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer platform: Google has
released a new stable version of its browser for Mac and Linux, bringing
it out of beta for these two platforms. The browser's latest version
for Windows had been released earlier.
The new version comes
just weeks after the company released speed enhancements to the beta
version of Chrome 5.0, which improved its V8 and SunSpider benchmarks by
30 and 35 percent, respectively.
The new version allows users
to synchronize both bookmarks and browser preferences across multiple
computers, including themes, Web content
settings, preferred languages, page zoom settings, and home page and start-up settings.
Chrome 5.0
also has more HTML5 features, such as geo-location Application
Programming Interfaces, Web Sockets, App Cache, and file drag-and-drop.
Google extensions users will be able to enable extensions to work in
incognito mode through the extensions manager.
Google is
pursuing Federal
Information Security Management Act certification for its Google Apps
suite of cloud-based productivity applications, which the company is
positioning as a direct competitor to Microsoft's desktop applications
such as Word and Excel.
David Mihalchik, Google’s federal
business development manager, noted that over a dozen federal agencies
are already using Google Apps, which consists of Gmail,
Google Sites, Google Docs and a video tool.
Federal agencies
are interested in the cloud-based technology as increased budget
pressures, including pressures to cut IT budgets, are pushing them to
seek less expensive alternatives to Microsoft’s application suites.
Google
Chrome has been increasing its share of the browser market. According
to Net Applications, third-ranked Chrome gained 0.6 percent in market
share over March, commanding 6.73 percent of web surfers as of
end-April.
Existing Chrome users will be automatically updated to
Chrome 5.0 soon, but users may download it here now.
About the Author
Kathleen Hickey is a freelance writer for GCN.