Google to bring Microsoft Office, other apps to Chromebooks

Google is partnering with software company Parallels to bring the Microsoft Office applications and other legacy enterprise Windows applications to Chromebooks.

According to Mashable, Parallels has today announced that it will be bringing "full-featured Windows applications" to Chrome Operating System (OS) in partnership with Google.

However, the ability to run Windows applications on that OS will be specific to Enterprise users. Google quietly hid the announcement in the way of a one-liner in a blog post about remote work, adding that it will share more information in the coming months.

"We have long been saying that almost any business role can be a cloud worker, and COVID-19 has dramatically made this point," said Google's John Solomon, VP of Chrome OS.

"As a result, the Chrome OS team is working on new ways to make sure every company can benefit from the velocity created by supporting a cloud workforce. For example, our new partnership with Parallels brings legacy application support -- which includes Microsoft Office desktop apps -- to Chromebooks," he added.

For the unversed, Parallels is a virtualisation program that is most known for bringing Windows apps to mac OS.

As per Parallels, the functionality will be made available to Chrome enterprise this fall.

However, at the time, the questions around whether it will also be made available to consumer Chromebooks a bit later, how well it will run, and further queries are unanswered.

This is not the first time that Google has tried to bring Windows applications to Chromebooks, as the company was reportedly working on a way to dual boot Windows on the Pixelbook in early 2018.

( With inputs from ANI )