SAN FRANCISCO: Google took the Web browser battle to iPads and iPhones with the release of Chrome software for popular Apple devices built with Safari online surfing programs at heart.
“People have been asking to use Chrome on the iPhone,” Chrome Product Management Director Brian Rakowski said while showing off the new browser programs slated to be available in Apple’s online App Store. “We figured why stop there, that we would launch Chrome for the iPad too.”
Safari remains the default browser used in Apple gadgets and the “engine” that Chrome or other Web-surfing applications has to rely on.
“It is obviously not what powers Chrome in Windows and Android,” Chrome senior vice president Sundar Pichai said in an interview at Google’s annual developers conference in San Francisco.
“I think we were able to get it working well,” he continued. “We had to make trade-offs.”
Google announced Chrome for iPads and iPhones as it enhanced software to synch the browser across the array of Internet-linked devices commonly used in modern lifestyles.
People could start browsing with Chrome on a Macbook and then pick up where they left off on a smartphone, tablet, or other computer, Rakowski demonstrated at the company’s annual gathering of developers. “Chrome was built for a better web,” Pichai said during a presentation. “We want to make sure Chrome acts like a layer to work seamlessly across all your devices,” he continued. “No other browser is doing this.”
Google on Thursday also made its Drive online data storage service available on iPhones, iPods and iPads, joining Microsoft’s SkyDrive and others as competition to Apple’s iCloud.
Cloud-based “lockers” allow users to store documents, images or other digital files at datacenters and then access them from whichever Internet-linked devices they wish.
“Google Drive is about making it easy to live in the cloud,” said Google product manager Clay Bavor.
“At its core, Drive is about enabling sharing and collaboration.”
Improving and expanding Chrome appears to be part of a shrewd strategy to keep Google woven into people’s Internet activities no matter what gadgets they use, according to Forrester analyst Frank Gilette.
“Google wants to be in as many places as their customers are,” Gilette said. “Google is making it so that no matter what device an individual picks up, their stuff and what they were doing (at Google previously) is right there.”
Google’s strategy includes making Chrome ubiquitous and, where needed, making its own hardware.
