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We’re on the second day of Google’s I/O Developer’s Conference, with the second day geared more towards software and, surprisingly, iOS.
Google announced today that Google Chrome & Drive are coming to iOS and will be on Apple’s App Store later today.
Google big-wig Brian Rakowski, Vice President of Google Chrome Division, took to the stage to gleefully announce that the world’s most popular web browser will now be available on all Apple devices.
Chrome users will now be able to dump Safari for a shiny new Chrome App – the app isn’t all that exciting as it’s pretty much the same web browser you’d fnd on Android devices.
The reason behind getting Chrome onto iOS is there are rumours Apple will ditch the madatory Google search on Safari, for their own search system, resulting in less search engine revenue for Google from mobile users.
Google obviously makes a mint via its search engine on Safari, so the move is seen by many as a way to make sure they’re at the forefront of searching the web from mobile devices.
Available sometime today, the new app will work on iOS version 4.3 or later. Not only did Google unveil Chrome for iOS, the search engine giant announced their cloud service Google Drive is making its way to Apple’s platform today too.
If you download the app you’ll get a free 5GB of storage, it’s already available on Mac, PC, Chrome OS and Android. The iOS app adds clever real-time collaboration and slick search features that recognises both documents and photos.
Google also announced its desire to be the number 1 cloud service provider for the emerging business market, and are keen to take on the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle.
Google SVP of Chrome and App, Sundar Pichai, claimed that 5 million businesses, government agencies in 45 states and 66 top US Universities have all gone “gone Google”.
Pichai dubbed the new Google Drive functionality a “radical” change from existing offerings. Google showed off a quick video that revealed Google Hangouts, saying “The meeting has gone Google” with real-time collaboration and offline Google Docs editing and sharing.
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