Chrome Archives - Serious Startups

iOS Users Get To Use Google Chrome Before 90% Of Android Users Do

Today was the second day of I/O, and Google announced that they would be delivering Google Chrome to iOS users. That’s great news at first. Mac, PC, Android–they all have Chrome, it’s just second nature to think that iOS has to be next on the list. They were, and Chrome was released today in the App Store and quickly rose to the #1 spot in the store. This is because, well, it’s Chrome and Chrome is awesome. While Google usually doesn’t release the most polished apps on iOS (Gmail was pretty embarrassing to say the least), they really seemed to take the time to not only make Chrome work properly, but really come out polished and beautiful.

Chrome for iOS will sync all of your settings and bookmarks with your Mac or PC’s Chrome settings, and tabs will sync seamlessly from device to device. I know myself and a lot of others are huge desktop Google Chrome fans because of its sleek, lightweight design, and that factor definitely remains constant in the iOS iteration. Chrome is as reserved as it needs to be, and really only shows your tabs above and nothing else unless a menu is opened. Plenty of options are available to play with, and you can even have an unlimited number of tabs. Chrome for iOS is a fantastic app.

This may leave Android users a little sore, however. While Chrome has been on Android in beta for quite sometime (and saw its first stable release yesterday), over 90% of Android users can’t even download and install it. Only Android 4.0 and higher has access to the app, so even phones with ridiculous specs that are limited by Gingerbread or older can’t even view Chrome in the Play Store. This has got to change. Google can not continue to let Android is so fragmented that iOS devices from 2 years ago can use Google Chrome when a 2 month old Android device still can’t.

Google Updates Maps With Offline Use, Chrome Comes Out Of Beta, And Google+ Gets Tablet Support

At Google I/O today after announcing Android 4.1 Jellybean and the Nexus 7 tablet, the Google team also went ahead and updated a few of their apps as well. First, Google Chrome has finally come out of beta and is hitting the Play Store today. It is still only available to devices running Android 4.0 and higher, but it is out of beta and ready to roll in full. Google Maps has also been updated to finally support offline Maps, something they announced would be the “next dimension of Maps.” This will make it much easier for users to navigate with a bad data connection, and those without one at all can download certain maps and use them without any type of connection at all. This version of Google Maps is in the Play Store now and available for download for all users with Android 2.2 and higher.

Google+ finally has a tablet version as well, and an iPad version is on its way according to the Google+ team. This new tablet version is what Google calls the best Google+ experience they have created yet, and it incorporates the newly added events feature as well. Android users have access to this newly optimized app today, and iPad users will get it “soon.” Google+ for Android and iOS recently got a complete UI overhaul and now tablets can have an optimized version so the new UI can properly come to light on the big(er) screen.

Launching Tonight Yahoo’s Answer To Chrome, I Think

Yahoo, tonight is launching what they are calling a “Chrome Killer”. But there is a problem, as you can see right now you can download a plugin to use it on…guess what? Chrome.

I don’t get it either. As of now, when you go to axis.yahoo.com you are able to “Download it now”(Chrome Extension) view a video of it or see an ad for it. While having a new choice in browsers is nice, I’m still not sure why Yahoo will try something else it’ll fail at instead of fixing their problems they have now. Visually, it looks good until you realize how much quicker Chrome is to use, and return to using it.