Under the helm of CEO Satya Nadella, the once reluctant Microsoft appears to be coming out of it’s walls to acknowledge the dominance from other firms. And with the cross-platform focused approach we witnessed during the Windows 10 launch earlier this year, it is pretty clear how Microsoft has woken up from its slumber.
Its better late than never for the tech giant – which has lost its erstwhile dominance to the likes of Google and Apple – as it launches its own Chrome extension that allows access to office Online.
This is a major step for the company that has maintained strict exclusivity, ever since its inception. The extension will provide Office users with on the go access to their files via world’s most popular browser — Chrome. Users can also create word, excel or PowerPoint files through the extension.
By launching an Office extension on Chrome, Microsoft is exhibiting its new strategy, that is reflective of Nadella’s attitude to evolve Microsoft with the changing market.
The extension is available for Windows and Mac OS and is free to download, allowing users to create files that can be accessed offline as well. With the launch of the extension, Microsoft’s focus seems to be more on the cloud platform with its Office 365, that is seen to be going head to head with Google Docs services which are embedded into Google Drive platform.
While the extension launch is fine, Microsoft itself is under intense pressure to make its Edge browser fare better than Chrome and not end in a fate witnessed by IE. In fact, Gartner now says that not only has Chrome overtaken Internet Explorer in prominent markets, it has done so in the corporate class as well, an area which was largely considered Microsoft’s forte till date.
Even the launch of Edge hasn’t delivered the results Microsoft had hoped for. The web browser lacks in some customisable features like the extensions — that make Chrome more popular than Edge. Microsoft seeks to be keen on adding the extension feature to the Edge, but users might have to wait until next year for the feature to be incorporated into the web browser.
And even though Edge has shown better results in benchmark speed and performance tests, introducing the extensions feature into Edge will only push the market share of the web browser upwards.
