Google’s browser developers are currently working on new software for Apple’s iOS platform, in which the search engine group’s Blink engine is used. The previous Chrome for iOS uses the WebKit engine provided by Apple.
The reports of the new development are somewhat unexpected. Because Apple has never approved an alternative browser on its platform that does not work on the basis of the WebKit engine. “Apps browsing the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit JavaScript,” the iOS App Store Review Guidelines state.
It is not entirely clear why Google is now doing the work of taking a different approach. Because under the current regulations, this browser will definitely not be available in the App Store. At least according to Google, this is not necessarily the purpose of the native Blink implementation.
“This is an experimental prototype that we are developing as part of an open source project aimed at understanding certain aspects of performance on iOS,” a company spokesperson told The Register. “It will not be available to users and we will continue to follow Apple’s guidelines.”
However, if the guidelines were to change, Google would quickly have something to react to the new situation. And that’s not entirely unlikely. Because Apple’s platform foreclosure has recently been increasingly targeted by various competition authorities.
So it is quite foreseeable that in the future not only Apple with its own app store will decide which software can be used on iOS. In this case, the app store guidelines would also essentially become obsolete and alternative browsers could perhaps bring improvements to users.
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