Google announces Chrome for iOS

Google kicked off the second day of its I/O conference by introducing Google Chrome and Drive for iOS devices.

The browser will offer all the features of its Android counterpart, including the ability to sync tabs, passwords, and settings across hardware platforms.

"Some of you have been very persistently asking [for Chrome on iOS]," said Google vice president of Chrome Brian Rakowski.

"I'm very happy to say the team has really pulled something great off."

Google showed off features such as Chrome mainstay "incognito mode," which makes browser activity untraceable, on an iOS device.

The search giant also unveiled Google Drive for iOS at the keynote. The storage service will be made available on iPad, iPhone, iPhone Touch, and Mac computers.

The cloud service will come with Drive's newest features, enabling users to edit documents offline and then synch up edited content when they hop back on an internet connection.

The offline editing features are not yet available for spreadsheets and presentations, but Google said they are working on addressing that.

Google also unveiled a new Drive feature which will allow users to search the cloud using image recognition software. For example, if a user searches for pyramids, Drive will show all uploaded pictures with pyramids in them, even if the pictures have not been identified as pyramids.

The launch of Chrome for iOS comes amid a growing battle for market supremacy between the two firms. Earlier this month at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference, the iPhone maker confirmed plans to axe Google Maps from its iOS 6 platform.

Apple said that it was going with sat-nav firm TomTom to create their own mapping service for iOS 6 instead.