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Comment by titanix2 | Hacker News Reader

Tl;dr: dude works in school where they use Google Docs, which run better in a desktop web browser than the corresponding iOS app.

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I’m pretty sure that Google purposely cripples their office suite on mobile Safari and iOS because it helps their narrative of iPad not being a “proper” computer, which helps them sell Chromebooks.

Or more charitably, underallocates resources to keep feature parity. Yes, to sell more Chromebooks, but is Apple’s iWork suite available on the Chrome Store?

It’s actually broadly available on iCloud.com and works very well.

It isn't explicitly a Chrome app, but there are web versions of the iWork apps available through icloud.com, and they work pretty decently in a browser.

This is 100% not true. Enterprise adoption of GSuite is infinitly more valuable to Google than chromebook sales, and that means having well-supported apps on iOS, which is the BYOD platform of choice for most office workers.

Like another comment mentioned, it's much more likely that the web version, which constitutes the major use case for the app (chromebook, windows, macOS, etc.) just has a boatload more developers working on it.

I mean, when you can have your cake and eat it to by getting people to sign up for GSuite and buy Chromebooks, I see no reason why Google would want to release a good experience on iPad.

To be fair, I'Ve found Google Docs (well, especially Google Sheets) to run like garbage on macOS Safari. Sometimes even completely breaking copy/paste etc

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