Google is launching apps for one of its most popular services along with one of its newest services today for iPhone and iPad: the Chrome web browser and Drive.
Kudos to Google for doing a fantastic job maintaining the look and feel of Chrome for the desktop with Chrome for iOS — it looks nearly identical. The greatest advantage of having Chrome on iOS is sync. If you use Chrome on your main computer(s) and have sync turned on to keep your extensions, bookmarks, and other data consistently up-to-date, the Chrome app on iOS won’t require much set up at all. You’ll be able to just sign in and retrieve all the data you’re used to seeing.
In related Android news, Chrome has moved from beta status to stable on the platform as of today.
Google also unintentionally just possibly saved Apple’s ass from a future antitrust claim since up until now Safari on iOS had little to no real browser competitors. Still, eventually Apple needs to start supporting “default” browsers so a user can open links in an app other than Safari, for instance. Chrome has gained tremendous popularity over the past few years so it’s likely to be a top pick for many iDevice owners.
The second app making its way onto Apple’s mobile OS is Drive, Google’s recently unveiled Dropbox-esque cloud storage and syncing service. (It’s also available on Chrome OS too, which just made around eleven people very happy.) Editing files in Google Docs now works offline, too. The company announced at the Google I/O keynote that Drive hit 10 million users, an impressive feat in the short amount of time its been live.
Both apps should hit the App Store at some point later today for free.
Update: Chrome and Drive are now live on iOS!
