Google Chrome

Google Chrome joins Google Maps in getting an update on the iOS App Store this week. The latest Chrome browser adds a feature already familiar to Safari users. Holding the back browsing button will bring up a menu of recently visited web pages.

The back button function is a shortcut to accessing the history right from the main browsing window that can save time. With this update to Chrome 25 for iPhone and iPad, Google has also made it possible to share a web page using Messages.

I've recently noticed that my iPhone is starting to look like a Google billboard, and I'm starting to wonder if other iPhone owners are feeling the same way.

YouTube beat out Instagram as the most downloaded free app of the year, and Google Maps shot to the top of the charts after being downloaded over 10 million times in less than two days. Granted, YouTube and Google Maps were already popular apps people were used to using, and iPhone owners just wanted them back after Apple removed them with iOS 6. But if you're like me, and have traded in Siri for Google Search, and Safari for Google Chrome, you might feel like you're betraying Apple a little.

Then there are Gmail users and the social networking addicts who use Google+ along with Facebook and Twitter, and now Google is taking over our iPhone cameras with YouTube Capture. At this rate iPhone users are going to find themselves with more Google apps on their devices than stock Apple apps, or any other third party apps.

If you prefer Google Chrome (or any other browser) over Safari but use Safari because it's faster, I have the perfect jailbreak tweak for you. iPhone users can now give Chrome and other third party apps a speed boost with a new jailbreak tweak called Nitrous.

Safari is faster than other mobile browsers on the iPhone because Apple restricts access to the fast Nitro Javascript engine in iOS. Nitrous levels the playing field by unlocking the Javascript block for third party apps. This allows browsers like Chrome and apps like Tweetbot to perform much better.