When Google eventually took the plunge and pushed out the Chrome browser to the iOS App Store during the second day of their I/O conference in San Francisco, it answered the prayers of thousands of iPhone and iPad users who had been longing for a worthy competitor to the native Mobile Safari browser which Apple ships with the operating system. Chrome for iOS immediately jumped to the top of the App Store download charts and has remained there ever since with users loving the simple and elegant design with great features such as the Chrome Omnibar and gesture integration.
As part of their continuing effort to provide great native mobile experiences for their services and brands, Google has updated Chrome for iOS to bring the obligatory bug and security fixes, as well as some minor changes that reflect the feedback given by users and the more notable addition of being able to share webpages through social networking sites to let friends and followers alike see exactly what it is you are spending your time viewing on the internet. Whether or not that is a good thing is entirely dependent on where your personal web viewing takes you to.
The update appends the Chrome settings menu with the additional sharing options and allows us to share the viewed content with Facebook friends, our Twitter timeline, directly to our Google+ Circles and also send the link to the page out via the native email accounts on the device. With Apple already adding the ability to share web pages through Twitter as of iOS 5 and directly through email, the update to Chrome is another step by Google to not only match that functionality of Mobile Safari, but also go that one step further by giving users Facebook sharing before Apple, as well as adding in the ability to share to their own Google+ network.
Chrome has become my main browser on the iPhone and iPad since its launch in June, and this update from Google definitely gives me more of a reason to continue using it, now we just need some speed improvements.
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