Year in review: What Chrome browser brought to enterprises in 2022

It’s hard to believe that 2022 is almost over. As the year wraps up, we wanted to do a quick recap of all of the improvements we made to Chrome for our enterprise customers this year. As more work is being done on the web, it’s crucial for enterprises to have a browser that fits the needs of their IT teams, security teams and end users. That’s why we have focused on:

• Optimizing how you manage Chrome in your environment

• Safeguarding your workforce with secure enterprise browsing and support for your expanded security ecosystem

• Improving Chrome for work 

Let’s look at a few memorable things we released this year across these areas.

Optimizing browser management

Managing Chrome brings organizations a lot of additional benefits when it comes ensuring Chrome meets the needs of your organizations. Our recommended approach to managing Chrome is through Chrome Browser Cloud Management. Not only does it allow organizations to manage Chrome across multiple operating systems, it also provides visibility into critical browser information and provides many other capabilities that make your IT team’s life easier. Here are some improvements that came to Chrome’s management this year:

• To support the business users who need easy access to business apps and data no matter where they are, we extended Chrome’s cloud management to Android and iOS mobile devices earlier this year. This means you can now use Chrome Browser Cloud Management to configure and set policies for a more secure and consistent cross-device user experience, get aggregated browser reports, and use APIs to export information for custom dashboards and workflows.

• Chrome is now even better for Mac and iOS devices. Chrome offers zero touch enrollment with Jamf Pro so you can easily deploy and customize browser policies to your MacOS, iOS and iPadOS devices directly from the Jamf Pro console and Google Admin Console. 

• Some recent improvements were made to Chrome Browser Cloud Management to enable IT teams to view apps and extensions details, export more data, and gain more security insights. The new Chrome Guide modules, built right in the Google Admin console, can help new admins get started quickly with Chrome Browser Cloud Management.

If you’re not using Chrome Browser Cloud Management yet, you can get started here. There is no fee for managing Chrome from the cloud. 

Safeguarding your workforce with secure enterprise browsing

When it comes to cybersecurity, Chrome is trusted by millions of business users as a secure enterprise browser. This year, we continued to invest heavily in this area, expanding our work with the broader ecosystem to offer organizations more flexibility in their browser security strategy. Here are some new security protections we made available:

• Chrome has built-in security capabilities to protect your users and a full set of controls that IT and security teams can apply within the browser. For organizations that are looking for a more advanced approach to browser security for all or some of their users, they can combine Chrome with BeyondCorp Enterprise, Google’s zero trust solution, to protect corporate data, enforce zero trust security models, and gain advanced security and risk insights. The best part about Google’s secure enterprise browsing solution is that it’s built within Chrome, so you don’t need to install additional software or agents to deploy it. 

• Organizations can also seamlessly integrate their other security tools and platforms with Chrome’s for further security insights. Whether you’re using Google Cloud Pub/Sub, Google Chronicle, or third-party solutions such as Splunk or CrowdStrike, you can set up the integration in just a few simple steps to start sending critical browser security events to your chosen solution for security forensics. With more visibility into the potential threats in your browser environment, such as unsafe site visits, password breaches, password reuse, and more, IT and security teams can make better data-driven security decisions. We’re working on bringing even more partner integrations to Chrome in 2023.

Improving Chrome for work

One fundamental piece of making Chrome better for work is through performance. Our goal is to make Chrome one of the most performant browsers in the market, and we’re continuously making under-the-hood improvements to improve Chrome’s performance further. Productivity is another huge focus for Chrome - not just for end users - but for IT as well. People are spending more of their work day on the web, and we want to give users the tools they need to be as productive as possible. Some notable improvements in this area include:

• Users can now pick up their searches where they left off with Chrome journeys. When you type a related word into your search bar and click on "Resume your research" or visit the Chrome History Journeys page, a list of relevant sites you visited will show up. You can quickly pick up where you left off. This is an excellent way for end users to continue their workflows. 

• It's now easier than ever to perform simple tasks and access Chrome settings with Chrome Actions. This year we released actions to "Manage settings," "Customize Chrome," "View your Chrome history," "Manage accessibility settings," and "Share this tab." If you type any of those commands directly into the omnibox, you'll be taken right to where you need to be.

• Chrome recently released new capabilities to save battery and make browsing smoother. Memory Saver mode frees up memory from tabs you aren't currently using so the active websites your workforce is browsing have the smoothest possible experience. For battery savings, when device battery levels reach 20%, Chrome will limit background activity and visual effects for websites with animations and video. There are a few enterprise policies you can use to control these features: TabDiscardingExceptions, BatterySaverModeAvailability, and HighEfficiencyModeEnabled. 

• This year, Chrome became the highest-scoring browser on Speedometer. We're proud to announce that Chrome scores over 300 on Apple's Speedometer 2.0 benchmark suite on the M1 MacBook, the highest score ever seen.

• And we hit our 100th release earlier this year. A lot of work has gone into Chrome to make it the best browser for work! ?
  

Thank you for helping us achieve so much in 2022 and we can’t wait to bring even more exciting improvements to you all in 2023. To get a more in depth look at what’s new from Chrome for enterprise, watch our recent Chrome Insider event on demand.

Finally, on behalf of Chrome Browser’s enterprise team, we wish you all a safe and happy new year!