Not wanting nor willing to get into the merits of that idea overall, but doesn't it strike anyone other than me as obvious that it's the #1 app for iOS today because it came out yesterday with much fanfare, it's free, and it's something most everyone is aware of and would want to play with?
An unofficial poll here in my office shows that everyone who downloaded it here did so to, in so many words, "play with it and see what it's like", though nobody yet has stated that they intend to replace their browser use with it.
While it's nice that you can get as much of the Google ecosystem on your iOS device as you can, I'm really not sure that the availability of that ecosystem on iOS is any sort of indication of the necessity of opening up iOS to embrace that ecosystem.
In other words, "If you want Android, you know where to find it."
The more revealing take-away from people having iPhone home screens full of Google apps is why they aren't using an Android phone.
This is exactly what will happen in Apple allows Chrome. They should remove it from the app store. It's against their policies and just like flash in mobile safari (firefox on ios is exactly like flash in mobile safari): All the arguments about not being "as native" are just as true, and Apple no longer has a Safari community across its devices to corral around and for developers to target.
Tim Cook is running Apple into the ground by removing Apple's user experience differentiation. He is creating beige boxes. Samsung can do that. Asus can do that. He needs to take a look at what the fuck Apple even is.
Are we thinking of the same Apple? Because the iPad 3 and the retina Macbook Pro don't really conjure up images of beige boxes for me.
I'll tell you a story about my first time with an Android device.
I went to the store to download an app. And it failed.
Over. And over. And over again. The device emitted a cryptic error message which, thankfully, was easily Googled. The troubleshooting steps required diving into the settings application and manipulating some controls to reset a data store in a low-level component in Android's OS.
Contrast that with an iPhone, which just works.
Apple's value, is, and shall remain, their airtight integration and reliable user experience. Putting Chrome on there touches none of that. None of my non-technical friends or family will ever touch it.
It's healthy for Apple to let third parties write whatever apps they want, so long as those apps don't impact system stability or security. Apple's industrial design makes hardware that's very difficult to successfully imitate, their content ecosystem is complete and richly integrated into their products. Their software and hardware are built in tandem.
No one is positioned to handle the whole enchilada as they are. When that changes, that will be the moment to worry. Meanwhile, they're in good shape.
Of course, they can't allow the replacement of the App Store and continue with their current model but a user that already owns an iPhone and replaces the Mail app or web browser doesn't hurt Apple in any way. They'd probably even have more people buy iPhones (and make 30% on the sale of paid replacement apps). I fear it's because of their compulsion to control the experience from A to Z.
(disclaimer: I own an iPhone 4, iPad 2 and MacBook Pro)
I'd wager that some sort of (limited) "intent"-like mechanism is coming in a future iOS down the road, although not 6 and probably not 7.
