back to article Google tells Microsoft IE shops: We can help you with those 'legacy apps'

Google is chucking Chrome at businesses whose applications are hardwired to Internet Explorer - and coupled its offer with a snub to Redmond, claiming its once-proud browser has become "legacy". The Chocolate Factory today released the Chrome Legacy Browser Support extension that - with additional fiddling courtesy of your IT …

COMMENTS

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  1. stephajn
    Pint

    Did I read that right??

    Internet Exploder Legacy Browser Add-On?

    AHHHH HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

    1. Don Jefe
      Thumb Up

      Re: Did I read that right??

      That really is funny! I missed it on my first read but had to go back after you pointed it out.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Did I read that right??

      Bit late to the party...... I also used to rename the Outlook shortcut to Outaluck :)

      1. Not That Andrew

        Re: Did I read that right??

        Really really late to the party. I used to rename File Manager and Program Manager to File Mangler and Program Mangler back when using Win 3.11. And there used to be a trick (intended for branding purposes IIRC) whereby you could rename IE to your choice, I usually went with Internet Exploiter, Exploder was too obvious.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ?

    Is just not the same as IE tab?

  3. Crazy Operations Guy

    So it does fuck-all if you want to use said apps on a modern system? I was hoping that maybe they just emulated ActiveX; then maybe I thought it would automatically detect when it needed IE, but you have to do it manually. So what good is this?

    1. Charles 9

      Uh, what about running the legacy browser from a VC which can then be given additional hardening from the hypervisor level? Is something preventing this like cost considerations and/or resource constraints?

  4. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    "I was hoping that maybe they just emulated ActiveX; then maybe I thought it would automatically detect when it needed IE, but you have to do it manually. So what good is this?"

    If you look at usage stats, there's all these businesses that run IE6 because they'll have one or two horrible ActiveX "IE6 required" intranet apps sitting around. So, the IT admin puts those sites into the legacy browser support plugin, and can let the users use a browser from this century (so long as it's Chrome....) They get IE6 on the few sites that need them, while avoiding the security and compatibility implications of having anyone try to use IE6 on the open internet.

    Too bad they don't have a firefox plugin for this, I really don't like Chrome's user interface too much. That said, I have nothing that needs a plugin like this anyway *shrug*.

    1. John G Imrie

      Too bad they don't have a firefox plugin for this

      You mean that this doesn't exist?

  5. Gordon Pryra

    Good news

    It means 90% of the world can finally move away from IE6,.........

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Good news

      90% of the world already have.

  6. JDX Gold badge

    Great

    Now if only Google would do a proper enterprise version of Chrome so businesses can adopt it properly... centralised updates, proper support, etc.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Great

      "Now if only Google would do a proper enterprise version of Chrome so businesses can adopt it properly... centralised updates, proper support, etc."

      Quite - plus group policy control of settings....and not having 10 times the security vulnerabilities of IE....

      Google are dreaming if they think enterprises are going to adopt Chrome as is.

  7. Paul Ireland
    Thumb Up

    This was a good idea, even in 2010

    I commented that this kind of thing would be a good idea on another article back in 2010!

    http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/837148

    I wonder why it took Google so long since then to come up with this.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yup, right..

    .. remove a defective leaky browser by replacing it with one that is designed by a company that really, really wants to know everything you do on the Net. The way I see it, you'd be screwed either way - thankfully there are other alternatives.

    1. GBL Initialiser

      Re: Yup, right..

      I'm using IE10 at the moment, I quite like it but I use various operating systems so ideally I would like to move to Firefox. I have encountered a few issues connected to its lack of a process-per-tab feature though which is the only thing currently holding me back.

  9. Gordon Fecyk

    No thanks, we're good here.

    Binned the "legacy" web apps or made sure they worked in Intranet Zone.

  10. Quattrone
    WTF?

    You know on the one hand I think its pretty funny to smack down an arrogant company. On the other hand, Google whose motto was once "First do no harm" is now becoming an arrogant company that like Microsoft thinks it knows whats best for you. To some degree, yes they do, they're quite convenient. And again on the other hand, it's taken some liberties with our privacy.

    I'm not amused by this apparant Microsoft snub, not because they don't deserve it, but because Google is no longer in a morally superior position to do so.

    1. JDX Gold badge

      This is a purely technical discussion, nothing about morality in this example. Many businesses have apps which rely on unsupported or crap browsers so it's a valid angle to target them as a way to advertise your brand generally.

    2. hplasm
      Meh

      "First do no harm"

      I think that is doctors, rather than GOOG...

      1. Rukario

        Re: "First do no harm"

        Right. Google's is "Don't be evil."

  11. jst

    Help the crippled

    Please pass this on to payroll processor ADP. They are stuck in the past.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      ADP

      Lol have the same issue with them....wow are they way way way way behind with their Java system usage....

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    mac version too, please!

    Hmmm... I could do with a mac version of this at work where, for reasons of unfathomable insanity, we have a registration, marking and admin system that runs on an out-of-date version of crappy Silverlight. On Chrome, I'm unable to login to it as the text entry fields won't accept input, although for some reason it works OK in Safari.

    Shooting our entire IT dept and replacing them with a million monkeys armed with keyboards would be the ideal soluton but, in the meantime, a mac version of this plugin would save me the hassle of manually having to switch to Safari and back, every time I want to mark a register.

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