Google Chrome Enterprise is rolling out browser changes designed to separate people’s professional and personal activities, in addition to management enhancements.
Not unlike the Apple TV show Severance, where Lumon Industries employees have their brains severed to isolate their corporate and personal lives, Google is strengthening the barrier between work profiles and play.
Instead of brain implants it will use branding and visual cues to slice the users’ lives, applying these cues to Chrome Profiles, because the web browser, once simply a user-agent, has become an employee management tool.
This is a view advanced by Gartner in 2023 and since embraced by Google and Microsoft, both of which have business-focused variations of their commercial browsers.
“With the browser playing a more critical role in daily work, it’s more important than ever for IT teams to make it clear to employees that they are logged into a corporate browsing experience that is managed and monitored by their company,” said Chrome Enterprise group product manager Hakan Kilic and product manager Julia Lomakina in a blog post provided to The Register.
“Chrome Enterprise makes this easier to signal than ever before by now allowing organizations to customize browser profiles with their company logo.”
Screenshot of Chrome Enterprise Profile – Click to enlarge
Business customers can now impose a more obvious visual identity on work profiles in Chrome Enterprise. The idea is that the scolding glare of the corporate logo may deter inappropriate browsing activity and keep employees focused on business activities, like macrodata refinement.
Employees will be able to get a better sense from their enterprise profile what aspects of their web browsing are being managed. Similarly, IT and security teams are to have better visibility into managed profiles.
Enterprises can, for example, enable reporting for signed-in managed users across multiple platforms including Android, Mac, Linux, and Windows. This single-pane view shows information about browser versions, operating system, policies, extensions, and whether the device is managed or not.
Chrome Profile customization is available at no cost to Chrome Enterprise Core customers.
Chrome Enterprise Premium customers ($6 per user per month) come with some additional bells and whistles, like the ability to activate data controls and set access levels for business apps. For example, Kilic and Lomakina suggest that a company might want a contractor to access a CRM application through a work Chrome profile with added copy and paste protections active. ®