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Google Updates Chrome For Android, iPhone And iPad With Focus On Speed, Search And Sharing
Ever since Google launched its Chrome browser on multiple mobile devices, more people have been getting used to syncing their desktop browsing experiences for on-the-go usage. Being able to have one browsing experience wherever you go is handy, but when a browser doesn’t move as fast as, say, Safari on the iPhone, it’s hard to dedicate yourself to making the switch.
Google knows that and has pushed updates to its Chrome browser for Android, iPhone and iPad with the focus on bringing the speed of the experience up to snuff. On the Android side of the house, the company says that the browsing experience is now 25 percent faster thanks to expanded support for HTML5 and utilization of the latest V8 JavaScript engine. If pages load fast and scrolling is like butter, you’re going to use it more. Period. Those same changes will start being made on other platforms soon, Google says.
Here’s what Grace Kloba and Rohit Rao had to say about the changes:
We’re continuing to add plenty of under-the-hood stability, security improvements and bug fixes to Chrome for both Android and iOS. We look forward to your feedback on the latest versions of Chrome, now available on Google Play and in the App Store.
On the iOS side of the house, Google has added better search and sharing options, which are key components of a speedy experience on an iPhone or iPad. Clearly, Android has the advantage of having stronger sharing options baked into the OS, so Google has to be more creative with how things are done within its apps.
Instead of seeing a long URL in the “Omnibox” at the top of the browser, you’ll see your search phrase so you can keep refining it instead of dealing with that ugly URL. After using a Chromebook for a while now, I’m longing for the day that I’ll never have to see an ugly URL again, especially when all you’re using is a browser on a screen.
Here’s what the experience looks like; the changes might not be available to you for a few weeks:
On iOS, sharing and history surfing got simplified as well. You can now hold the back button to see all of the pages you’ve previously visited and tap Share under Menu to share whatever page you’re on. You’ll also see more options than before. The big thing here is that you can share any web page directly to iOS messages, a feature that has been sorely missing.
Is mobile Chrome there completely on these devices? No. But being the No. 1 desktop browser does give Google a leg up on adoption. By the time that most people have at least given the browser a chance on their mobile devices, hopefully Google will keep up its quick iteration process and lock those folks in. Apple definitely needs to take another look at Safari moving forward before it gets completely taken over by Mountain View.
