There’s a lot of animosity about Google’s applications on iOS. Michael Tsai posted a roundup:
No matter the technical reason behind the scenes, a company the size of Google shouldn’t need four months (nine if you count WWDC 2015) to ship a partial [Google Docs] compatibility update for iOS 9 and the iPad Pro. Google have only themselves to blame for their lack of attention and failure to deliver modern iOS apps.
Other Google apps also lag behind on iOS. Kirsty Styles:
After launching on Android in October last year, a pitstop feature has finally dropped on Google Maps for iOS today.
One of the major competitive edges that iOS has on Android, as I see it, is the quality of apps on the App Store. I recently experimented with using an Android handset, and my experience is that all the “big names” have pretty good apps: Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram … even Apple Music. But as your needs get more obscure, a Reddit client, an RSS reader, a podcast client say, so the apps get worse. This of course isn’t uniform, but I did find it striking. I bring this up because if Google doesn’t “prioritize” iOS because they don’t want to “help” their competitor, they’re only harming their own credibility. People will use alternatives (for instance, MS Office is really quite exemplary on iOS).
If I were Google and I didn’t want to “help” Apple, I’d make world-class web apps for mobile instead of half-assed native apps for mobile. As a comparison, Apple, Apple of all companies, do not have “iOS-like” apps on Android, they’re good Android citizens.