Chrome for iOS is getting a few significant upgrades today. Google is tightening integration across its iOS apps, which means iOS users can live within Google’s app ecosystem if they desire. Google is also beginning to experiment with data compression within Chrome for iOS to help users load pages faster and to conserve data use.
Version 28 of Chrome for iOS offers tight integration between your other Google apps on your Apple device. If you’re looking up an address that opens up the Google Maps web app, you will see a banner at the bottom to open up the link “Just Once” or “Always” in the Google Maps app. This is similar to how Android handles setting defaults for different apps.
Other apps like YouTube, Google+, and Drive will all offer this type of integration with more apps coming soon, according to Google. By signing into Chrome, users will be able to log into all other Google apps with a single click, making it an easy transition.
The experimental data compression won’t roll out to everyone today. Since this is an experiment, Google is being cautious and only rolling it out to small groups of users at a time. Data compression will work similarly to Opera‘s “Turbo” mode, which send the webpage to its servers for compression before being sent to the user’s browser.
iPad users can look forward to fullscreen browsing as well, which hides the omnibar when you start scrolling down. This feature was released recently on Chrome for Android. iOS users can now also access their full browsing history from the menu.
This update is particularly interesting as it shows that Apple is apparently relaxing its walled ecosystem. Previously, iOS users were forced to use Apple apps like Maps, Safari, and Mail. Now there are third-party apps that have the ability to replace Apple’s core apps.
