I have been working in the Google Workspace ecosystem since 2013, advising security teams and CISOs on how to lock down their environments. In that decade-plus of experience, I’ve learned that the hardest part of a CISO’s job isn’t the technology; it’s the humans.
Recently, I witnessed a scenario that perfectly illustrates this tension. Two large enterprise organizations, one with 7,000 users, another with over 10,000 attempted to roll out a third-party "Enterprise Browser." On paper, the strategy looked sound. But in practice, the rollout triggered a genuine user revolt. The feedback was brutal: switching browsers killed their productivity, disrupted their workflows, and, critically, broke their access to the native Gemini AI features they had started to rely on.
Both organizations were forced to reverse course and switch to Chrome Enterprise Premium. This wasn't just a preference issue; it was a lesson in the friction of security. You can build the most secure fortress in the world, but if it makes your employees’ lives difficult, they will find a way around it.
This brings me to the current hype around "Enterprise Browsers" like Island, Prisma, and Talon. I want to be diplomatic here because the engineering behind these tools is genuinely impressive. However, as a security architect, I believe their fundamental approach building a "forked" version of the browser is architecturally disadvantaged.
The issue is the software supply chain. These browsers are built on Chromium, the open-source engine that powers Chrome. They are, by definition, "downstream" from Google. When a Zero-Day vulnerability is discovered in Chromium and they are discovered often Google’s security team patches Chrome immediately, often within hours.
The forks, however, have to wait. They must wait for the upstream code, merge it into their proprietary fork, validate it against their custom feature set, and only then push an update to your fleet. In security, time is the math that matters. That lag time creates a "Patch Gap" a window of exposure where your expensive, purportedly secure browser is essentially a sitting duck for Zero-Day exploits. With the native approach, you are drinking directly from the source; there is no gap.
Beyond the security architecture, the "forked" approach struggles with the reality of the modern workflow. As I saw with those two large enterprises, users are incredibly sensitive to friction.
The browser is no longer just an application; it is the operating system of the modern workforce. When you tell a sales team or a developer to abandon the Chrome environment they’ve engaged with for 15 years sacrificing their bookmarks, extensions, and muscle memory you are introducing massive friction.
Furthermore, we are now in the AI era. Deep integration with Google Workspace and Gemini is becoming a baseline expectation for productivity. Users in those failed rollouts specifically cited the loss of "Help Me Write" and other native Gemini features as a dealbreaker. Forked browsers can’t manage these features with granular policy controls; they usually have to resort to blunt blocking. In contrast, the native browser allows you to set policies that enable these productivity boosters while ensuring enterprise data isn't used to train public models.
This is why I generally steer organizations toward Chrome Enterprise Premium. It allows you to secure the browser without fighting a battle you’ve already lost: changing user behavior.
Because it is native, there is no heavy agent to install and no "new" browser for users to learn. It connects agentlessly to the tools you already use, ingesting signals from CrowdStrike, Okta, and Microsoft Intune directly through the browser binary. You can enforce context-aware access policies like allowing a user to view a sensitive Doc but blocking them from printing it without the need for a complex VDI or proxy setup.
To the user, nothing changes. To the security team, the browser transforms from an unmanaged endpoint into a controlled gateway.
If you have a tiny group of high-risk contractors who need to be locked down to the pixel, perhaps a dedicated browser has a niche use case. But for the other 95% of your company? Stick with the native approach. It scales instantly, it patches instantly, and perhaps most importantly, it respects the way your people actually work.