In what could be an admission of defeat in the high-stakes Internet browser wars, Microsoft has released an Office Online add-on for Google's Chrome.
Chrome has been described as the fastest-growing browser in the world, with some claiming that it is the top choice among Internet browsers for enterprises. Microsoft unveiled the Edge along with Windows 10 to better compete within the space, but it seems that the company has accepted the reality of Chrome's growing influence.
The Office Online add-on places an icon on Chrome that is capable of showing the documents most recently edited on OneDrive or OneDrive for Business. The extension also allows users to create new documents in the browser-based versions of Office apps Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Sway and OneNote, as well as open documents stored locally in their computers.
Microsoft has been advocating a cross-platform ideology since Satya Nadella took over the position early last year. However, the special treatment that the company has given to Chrome could still be considering as surprising. While the now-defunct Internet Explorer still holds 51.6 percent of user share compared to 29.9 percent by Chrome, the rapid growth of users for Google's browser may have Microsoft on the ropes.
The user share of Chrome has increased by 8.7 percentage points over the previous 12 months, and 10.3 percentage points since August of last year, which is when Microsoft started telling users of Internet Explorer that updates had to be installed by January or they would no longer receive security updates.
Since December of last year, Internet Explorer has lost 7.5 percentage points in user share, which is the browser's worst since April 2010 when it was Mozilla's Firefox that was challenging Microsoft's browser.
Around two-thirds of the growth of Chrome since August of last year has been at the expense of Internet Explorer and slightly over one-third at the expense of Firefox.
Another thing that is interesting about Microsoft's Office Online add-on for Chrome is the fact that the extension is not yet available for Edge, which has been having difficulties in pulling in users and will not be supporting add-ons until next year.
The Office Online add-on can now be downloaded from Chrome's Web Store.
