British company to offer remote access to Chrome

A British company has signed a deal to work with Google on the company's Chrome operating system. Cambridge-based RealVNC offers remote access technology which will be incorporated into Chrome

It may seem strange that a company with Google's resources finds itself working with a small, UK company but according to Real VNC's CEO, Andy Harter, Google had been looking to develop remote access to Chrome products for some time before deciding to work with Real VNC and tap into its expertise. "They have a lot of clever people working at Google but sometimes these things are harder than they seem. We've been doing things for 15 years and we have a couple of important factors in our favour. Firstly, we've so it's easy to port, that's something that's vital for all the OEM work we do."

Harter couldn't say when users would see the first fruits of the collaboration - "that's something for Google" but said that the technology would help customers maintain access to pre-installed applications held on other computers. "We're the only remote access player with a cross-platform offering," said Harter, "so you can have a Windows PC connected to a Mac device or to an Android phone, or whatever."

"With more than 120 million users around the world, Chrome's focus on speed, simplicity and security has made it an exciting platform for innovation," said Chee Chew, engineering director at Google. "We are thrilled to tap into RealVNC's proven technology and expertise to complement our existing initiative."

Real VNC has got into the habit of working with large corporate, last year it worked with Intel, incorporating remote access technology onto chips. Real VNC is exploring some additional uses for its software, looking at installing it within cars so that people could use their smartphones on cars' own display screens -"people would be able to use the GPS from their iPhones, for example," said Harter.