Why Chrome and HTML5 adoption is more significant to businesses than you might think

August 1, 2011 by Daniel Sands - 1 comment

The news that Chrome has overtaken Firefox to become the second most popular web browser in the UK with a 22% market share shouldn’t come as a massive surprise. The heavy TV advertising (see video, above) and online promotion it has received demonstrates the same kind of commercial commitment Microsoft makes to Windows and IE. You don’t have to look to far beneath the surface to see the OS Trojan horse Google is delivering.

However, the Google Chrome OS battle is only just beginning. A handful of Chrome powered, cloud based laptops might make the headlines, but they are not yet having a significant commercial impact. What is more significant in the changing browser landscape is the widespread and continuing user demand for a better experience.

Chrome has one core focus, speed, but it also introduces users to the idea of frequent browser updates – which means performance will continue to get better. New features and better user experiences largely driven by HTML5 will become commonplace on the web. The fact that Firefox, Opera or Safari are not leading the charge can be largely attributed to commercial muscle rather than a real market superiority of the Google product.

And where is Microsoft in all this? Well, Microsoft too wants to see users update. IE9 is a pretty good browser and while IE’s market share has shrunk, Microsoft is also desperate to see users update and upgrade, doing everything it can to get users and businesses to update from IE6 – even setting an end date for the product. Having a ten-year-old version of its browser compared to recent competitors is not good for the perception of Microsoft products.

The point is whilst different browsers have different appeals and benefits for users, all of the modern browsers are delivering significantly enhanced experiences and most users are now embracing these changes.

So what does all this mean for businesses? Well, for more and more users (not just the young early adopters), the gap in performance and usability between their online experience at home and what they face in the office is becoming intolerable. Poor purchasing decisions, long-term contract commitments, intransigent IT departments, and vendors slow to update are saddling employees with poor excuses for systems meant to increase productivity.

To be fair, many of these systems run huge mission critical operations, and it takes time to develop and test to the level required. However, it’s simply no longer good enough to say “it’s business software” and use that as an excuse for it to work like something from 1995. Employees spend hours using these systems and they now know it’s possible for the systems to be much, much better. If they can do their weekly shopping in 10 minutes, while sending email and watching a movie online, why can’t their work system do two things at once? The software employees have to work with is every bit as important as the environment they work in and the people they work with, and the best people demand the best.

A raft of SAS applications and tools from Skype to Dropbox, Google docs, Salesforce and Office 365 are demonstrating what is possible. Smart vendors and corporate users will embrace the consumerisation of technology, innovate, update and become more productive. Those companies that don’t will be left with increasingly frustrated and demoralised staff, struggling to deliver the efficiencies of their competitors and to recruit the best staff, as their employees ask: “Why can’t this be as easy as it is at home?”