Google is, in many ways, Microsoft biggest competitor. While Redmond has a rivalry going with several technology titans, the Mountain View based search engine still takes the cake.
The company has just announced that it is retiring Chrome Frame — an Internet Explorer plugin that enables Chrome’s engine on IE. The tool was designed for environments where installing Chrome or updating to a modern browser was not a possibility.
Interestingly, the reason cited by the search engine giant is that Microsoft has already developed what it calls a “modern” browser, meaning such an add-on is now useless.
Google shared the news, without actually naming Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, saying:
“Today, most people are using modern browsers that support the majority of the latest web technologies. Better yet, the usage of legacy browsers is declining significantly and newer browsers stay up to date automatically, which means the leading edge has become mainstream.”
Newer browsers, indeed!
Nevertheless, Google takes the opportunity to recommend developers and users that are using the existing plugin to upgrade to a newer browser, be it Chrome or IE.
To its credit, Microsoft has invested a lot in making sure the newer versions of Internet Explorer now support the latest web technologies. The upcoming Internet Explorer 11, part of Windows 8.1, is expected to receive support for technologies like WebGL, along with performance enhancements.
