Google announced early in 2015 that its Chrome browser will still support Windows XP operating system until the end of the year. (Photo : Reuters)
Tech giant Microsoft is finally bowing down to the unquestionable dominance of the Google Chrome in the Internet browser market. Microsoft recently announced that it is launched a Chrome add-on in order for users to quickly access Office Online apps as well as their documents.
The newly launched Chrome extension from Microsoft will allow users to quickly access their most recently-edit documents in OneDrive or OneDrive for Business. It also lets user create new documents through the browser-based version of its Office suite which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Sway or OneNote. The extension also allow users to open documents stored locally in their hard drives.
Internet Explorer still holds the biggest share in terms of browser usage at 51.6 percent. However, the upsurge in Chrome's usage is slowly eating away IE's market share and now stands at 29.9 percent. This slow acquisition of usage percentage instantly remind tech analysts just how Internet Explorer crushed Netscape Navigator as the widely used Internet browser more than a decade ago.
The most important statistic is just how much Chrome's user share has jumped in the last 12 months. According to Computer World, Chrome user share jumped by 8.7 percentage points in the past 12 months and 10.3 points since August 2014.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer is slowly losing some of its market share. Since December 2014, Internet Explorer has lost 7.5 percentage points. The last time Internet Explorer suffered a nine-month decline was in April 2010, when Mozilla Firefox charges to take 25 percent of user share. At around this time, Chrome has less than seven percent of user share.
According to Tech Crunch, Microsoft also announced that it will integrate Skype into Office Online. This will allow users to communicate by video and voice chat within Office applications and also in Outlook.com.
