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Chrome browser for businesses
- lee 10y agoI don't see a Linux version on there. Does anyone know when/if Google will provide one?
- kijin 10y agoThey will, if and when there is demand for a Linux version of Enterprise Chrome from large Enterprises with deep enough pockets. Which might or might not ever happen.
- DannyBee 10y agoI thought this had been around forever? (I mean some form of installer and deployment kit/admin tool) I see other pages talking about it going back to 2010/2011
- eganist 10y agoThis appears to go far beyond that though. The policy and maintenance pieces in IE/Edge were one of the biggest reasons for some of the larger companies I've worked with that they had for staying off of other browsers. This looks to fix that.
- greglindahl 10y agoIt'll be interesting to see if this causes some "no open source, even if a support contract can be purchased" policies to get changed.
- ksec 10y agoWow, this is news to me. If it started in 2010/2011, then why are enterprise still using IE?
- gkoberger 10y agoEnterprises can't upgrade until all the software they depend on support Chrome. And those services aren't in any particular rush.
- m-p-3 10y agoBecause they don't know how to manage it properly. We've been doing this for several years, alongside the "Legacy Browser Support" extension for those internal systems that are still depending on IE until we decomission them later on. Everything else uses Chrome.
- vayarajesh 10y agoOh, I never knew about this.
- vc4 10y agoIt will be so much better for developers if there is another browser installed apart from IE in all enterprises. I still encounter companies downgrading to older version of IE to support their legacy applications.
- vayarajesh 10y agoso much better for the web application world. Most of the support tickets / issues are mostly related to the browser they are using. This is one step closer to removing IE.\
- ktta 10y agoI think most interesting part of all this is that they're offering support for this[1]. So that and it now being a part of G suite is making it an 'official' service/product. And since Chromium browser is an open source browser which receives many contributions from many developers[2], this will add Google to the list of companies which take contributions from OSS and make money off it. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of any other OSS product which contributes to their revenue in a direct way. Only thing that comes close is Kubernetes and then Tensorflow, but both aren't in the same 'level' that chrome is in now. [1]:https://enterprise.google.com/chrome/contact/?lsc=assist https://enterprise.google.com/chrome/contact/?lsc=assist [2]:http://www.chromium.org/Home http://www.chromium.org/Home
- vertex-four 10y agoMany of Red Hat's products are simply rebranded versions of open-source products that they sell and support.
- Klathmon 10y agoFor starters, the overwhelming vast majority of chromium development is from Google. Not to mention that the licensing explicitly allows commercial usage. (Also I'm almost positive there is OSS code running in MANY more places at google, including their server platforms, which they use as an almost direct part of their income) Unless I'm really misreading things, your comment makes it sound like Google is now suddenly "abusing" work from developers when that's just not the case. Not only is there literally nothing wrong with making money of OSS projects which explicitly allow it through their license, it's significantly better than the alternative of "closed source" in that anyone can not only view the source but can contribute and can even fork the project for themselves.
- Buge 10y agoWhat about Android?
- cimnine 10y agoLook at Elastic's product, i.e. Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, etc. Or Oracle with MySQL and Java. Redhat's OpenStack. Spring for Java. EhCache. Even .NET from Microsoft is also starting to accept third-party work. There are a lot of such examples, and that's usually a good thing. Because it means that there is someone with a different interest, than just working on cool things, behind the product (i.e. Money) and driving it foreward. Also, having professional support offered makes it sometimes much easier when convincing stakeholders to build upon an OSS product instead of a closed source equivalent.
- purity_resigns 10y agoChrome is but IE writ large.
- m-p-3 10y agoThis isn't a new thing at all, but more awareness to the sysadmins shouldn't hurt. Also, let me point you to the Legacy Browser Support extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/legacy-browser-support/heildphpnddilhkemkielfhnkaagiabh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/legacy-browser-sup... With proper GPOs you can force a domain/subdomain to open in IE directly from any links.
- verandaguy 10y agoI understand the utility of this, and the (unfortunate) reasons why this is needed, but good lord, it seems almost like a parody.
- reitanqild 10y agoFor Firefox there is (was?) IETab which lets you open websites in IE tabs inside Firefox. I think there was even an option to specify that certain websites (e.g. the Intranet, certain banks) should always open in IETab. Haven't used it for years but back when I was a Windows sysadmin it was the final proof that FF was better than IE: in addition to being Firefox it could also be IE : )
- whateveracct 10y agoIETab - now that's a blast from the past o.O
- mmanfrin 10y agoAre the benefits of these things to enterprise customers just the protection against dumb employees?
- djhworld 10y agoProtection and control.
- krzyk 10y agoIs this about replacing one monopoly with another? It is slowly starting too look like in the early 00's, most developers are starting to support only chrome, with no testing in Firefox or latest IE. On Android it is even worse, no one is testing with Firefox Mobile (Fennec) - this is WinXP-IE6 all over again.
- Quenz 10y agoOne day every webpage will render the same in every browser. One day...
- swiley 10y agoStick to <h> <a> <img> and <hr> and you can probably have that now.
- Endy 10y agoDoubtful, because someone will come up with their own proprietary rendering engine in a free browser, with some minor built-in feature people want; and then we're back where we started. PS - I miss Presto-based Opera.
- ianai 10y agoBingo. One might say the economic system in whole really pushes monopolies or oligopolies.
- chipsz 10y agoCSS Bug: Navbar disappears, but hovering menu links still works. Chrome 55.0.2883.95
- reitanqild 10y agoFor me Chrome is already the new IE: good enough to saturate the market to the point where devs stops caring about standards compliance. Personally I have tried to like it, multiple times but I always get annoyed and go back to FF. But then again I prefer Linux over Mac and Netbeans over IntelliJ so maybe it's just me.
- Quenz 10y agoI used to switch between Chrome and Firefox all the time before finally Chrome won me over with the most convenient cloud sync for bookmarks, passwords, etc.
- pdimitar 10y agoSame for me. Boggles my mind there still isn't a p2p (IPFS-like) system that allows you to take control of your bookmarks and use them with any browser. Then again, Chrome doesn't allow you to specify your own bookmarks server... :(
- valarauca1 10y agoPassword sync in browser is a piss-poor password manager solution. You should just use a password manager
- whyagaindavid 10y agoWhy is password sync in browser bad? Care to explain? I hate to have another password application; Dropbox sync t everywhere. Remember Firefox sync encrypts everything before upload. So does chrome.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoWell, for one, for most of the life of your browser, it took no security for anyone staring at your desktop screen to read plaintext versions of all your passwords. (Yes, physical access is complete access and all, but there used to not even be a casual attempt to prevent someone from stopping by your PC when you stepped away having a look at your passwords quickly.) Later versions of Chrome, IIRC, will trigger a UAC prompt on Windows before displaying passwords, or something similar. It's also generally been trivial for software to mine saved passwords from all browsers. I'm not fond of password managers personally, I prefer outright memorization, but password managers generally at least try to keep their contents secure, usually.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- eb0la 10y agoI guess this is more oriented to the devices like, meeting room hardware (can it be plugged to a VoIP server / Avaya switch?) that predates Polycom and Cisco markets... using hangouts. I guess for the TCO for Digital Signage devices is cheaper than the incumbents (cost of Android signage app/web app vs Windows app/web app + remote management control).
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago> automatically sign you into all your favorite Google services I'm dying to do that. "Give me convenience or give me death", as Jello Biafra so well put it. (Now, if they could make apps not automatically sniff out each other's use of a Google account ... like, keep blogger and maps out of gmail's knickers ...)
- damiien 10y agoThe hidden passwords sharing would be a killer feature, especially for business.
- newscracker 10y agoIt's good to see that Chrome's auto-updates can be turned off and updates pushed manually to users at a time of the IT administration team's choosing (I had to dig down into a few links to find this information). But it seems like there's nothing equivalent to Firefox ESR [1] in place, and Chrome would continue to update with the same frequency as the general public release (of the consumer focused version). Does anyone know if a longer term security-only-updates model is available with this like Firefox ESR (just for the sake of curiosity)? When I searched online I found a two year old reddit thread that indicated there wasn't one. [1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/
- eriknstr 10y agoSo this is what Google Ultron looks like. Neat.
- twblalock 10y agoOne notable thing about the dominance of Chrome (and the decline of Firefox) is that WebKit is now a de facto standard. The desktop and mobile versions of Chrome and Safari are based on it, and according to Microsoft, "any Edge-WebKit differences are bugs that we’re interested in fixing." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Edge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Edge). That covers every major desktop and smartphone browser except Firefox. At some point, developers are going to target their stylesheets for WebKit only, because Firefox rendering differences are going to be seen as nuisances that aren't worth overcoming in order to reach a tiny minority of users. Firefox will have to work toward WebKit compatibility as Microsoft Edge does. WebKit is doing pretty well for something that was originally part of KDE.
- ricardobeat 10y agoFirefox already does that, started long ago. They even added support for -webkit prefixes for the same reasons.
- twblalock 10y agoAs I can tell you from experience, they don't work all of the time, and it is a source of frustration for front-end developers I know who need to work with it.
- Manishearth 10y agoYou're not supposed to use the webkit prefixes. The only reason firefox has them is because some older websites will stop working. Most of them have equivalent standardized features, or are in a state where you really shouldn't be using them. Don't expect every webkit prefix to work in Firefox.
- gkop 10y agoI'm not sure we're supposed to think about prefixes at all, but instead just let https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer do its thing.
- jpochtar 10y agoIs anyone else concerned that this means IT can choose to hold back the version of Chrome in their organizations? Auto-updating Chrome has been low key one of the best solutions to the pain of backwards compatibility with older browsers. In the past we not only had to worry about compatibility between browsers, we had to worry about compatibility between browser versions. Further, auto-updating Chrome as dramatically reduced the time from new web feature implementation to widespread deployment and thus usability. I take it that turning off auto-updating will not be widespread, but I'd rather not risk it
- saw-lau 10y agoI'd just be happy to be able to use it at all at work. Our organisation blocks it because, apparently, 'it sends a lot of data back to Google.' I have no idea if this is true or not.
- Quenz 10y agoWhy would they change their reasoning with this new enterprise version?
- saw-lau 10y agoWell, they wouldn't, unfortunately. But I guess if having an enterprise version that doesn't auto-update means that more people are going to get to use it, then that's a Good Thing.
- dripton 10y agoIt's true, but you can turn that stuff off. You want to turn off things under Privacy like "Use a web service to help resolve navigation errors", "Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar", "Automatically report details of possible security incidents to Google", "Use a web service to help resolve spelling errors", and "Automatically send usage statistics and crash reports to Google." And not login into Chrome. The problem is that even if you tell all your employees what to disable, some of them will probably not comply. So a truly paranoid IT team might want to make their own fork of Chromium with those features removed.
- lhaussknecht 10y agoWe already deployed chrome in the enterise to run our Chrome packaged app. Too bad Google EOLed packaged apps....
- fbender 10y agoServiceWorker/Progressive Web Apps is the way to go. Works in any* browser. * Any modern and recent browser, so no Safari support, at least until summer '17.
- fbender 10y agoPlease explain the downvotes. Parent talked about "Chrome Packaged Apps" which are vendor-specific. Instead, I pointed to the cross-browser solution that is recommended by Google and works today.
- therealmarv 10y agoOh cool, a version for corporate rule fetishism admins who love controlling their MSI files. Happy I don't work in such an environment.
- sathackr 10y agowhen the MSI file defaults to sending crash dumps that may contain confidential financial information, to a server located in the developers broom closet, yes, we have to control the MSI files. Because admins have to answer to the auditors(and our conscience) when they ask the question "How do you ensure that personal and confidential information is not leaked from your environment" Which is why Windows 10 is my worst nightmare.
- CaptSpify 10y agoThat is a legit concern, but if that is the case, Chrome, Win10 and the like should be completely off the table.
- dx034 10y agoI thought it can be switched off in the enterprise version of Windows 10? AFAIK that's the only way how Microsoft was able to start convincing companies to switch from Windows 7.
- sathackr 10y agoThey do provide a GPO object to turn off the "Telemetry" for Enterprise versions. But it still installs the entire Windows store with Candy Crush Saga, Facebook, Minecraft, XBOX, etc. and they make it nearly impossible to remove. Why on earth they would force that crap down the throat of their ENTERPRISE customers is beyond me. I fought with it for months and finally gave up and cancelled the deployment project until MS offers a better way for enterprises to control the Window Store. Update: Added more below ---- IE: When trying to build a secure environment, you must eliminate all unnecessary attack surfaces. The customer did not need "XboxIdentityProvider" installed their Windows 10 Enterprise environment. But this is something MS feels must be installed on all Windows 10 PCs thus they made it nearly impossible to remove.
- lauren21247 10y agohttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYdf53MwhmY0roTmHddpHyw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYdf53MwhmY0roTmHddpHyw
- valarauca1 10y agoThis is a big negative for security. The best thing a sys-admin can do is blindly click okay every update. Out of date web browser bugs are pretty much THE mainstream hacking route. It is the route of least resistance.
- ComodoHacker 10y agoAre there any real differences besides support?
- A_Crazy_Idea 10y agoFor all those businesses without intellectual property or databases.
- jrcii 10y agoI use this for a school I administer. The GPO for Chrome is okay but not nearly granular enough. I ended up having to block chrome://* to get the level of restriction I needed.
- kozak 10y agoChrome is the new IE. Enterprise apps are being developer with the assumption that they will only even be run on Chrome, and become fragile because of that assumption. A recent example: someone has set up a race condition of timers that was only working (i.e. resolving in a specific order that is needed for the app to work) in Webkit-based browsers. No one cared to fix that, because it did work in Chrome, and that's all that's needed.
- bitmapbrother 10y agoWindows 10 is the new IE
- iampherocity 10y agoMy apologies.
- dang 10y agoComments like this will get your account banned from HN. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13277020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13277020 and marked it off-topic.
- mSparks 10y agoplease take your life somewhere else.
- nunez 10y agoI thought this was a thing for years...?
- fbreduc 10y agoNoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111!!!!!!!!!!!! i already knew this was the case since they installed an "enterprise antivirus plugin recently on my chrome and now the thing makes my computer unbearable. Time to switch to another browser at work :(
- cylinder 10y agoThis is a silly off-topic request, but any chance someone knows of a theme (ideally Wordpress) that looks like this page? I actually really like it and could use it for my next project.