How Google Might Get Its Apps Around Apple’s Closed Ecosystem

Apple has always kept a notoriously tight lid on what’s allowed on its official App Store. Even with its computer products, iOS is the only factory-approved operating system — though cracking the hood open and installing Linux isn’t out of the question.

The point is: Apple has managed to establish a remarkably closed mobile ecosystem in an age of cross-platform compatibility. However, Google might have plans for a clever workaround to those protectionist app policies that could get its entire app library on platforms it was never meant to be on.

The story starts with a recent mixup at Google headquarters. CNET reported that, on Sunday (April 24), Chromebook users noticed a new feature in their settings that asked them to authorize the use of Android apps on their Chrome OS-supported devices. While Google itself didn’t comment on the switch, it seems straightforward enough that the company would want to merge its vibrant mobile app library with a device that lives exclusively off the productivity of its apps.

This is where the story gets interesting because if Google decides to merge, or at least build a bridge between, Android and Chrome OS (essentially a souped-up version of the company’s popular Web browser), Apple and all of Google’s competitors may not be able to keep its open-sourced app library off their closed mobile ecosystems.

The speculation comes from Computerworld‘s breakdown of what Google’s plans for the Chrome OS platform could become now that it’s set to get a massive infusion of Android apps. Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s chief of Android, Chrome OS and Chromecast, recently noted that while there weren’t any plans for a direct merger of Chrome OS into Android, the two have already started sharing services and features that make sense with either platform.

“It’s definitely not binary,” Lockheimer told Computerworld. “In fact, they coexist beautifully today. [The different types of devices] all work great together, and it’s not like I have to choose one or the other. They serve different needs, and that’s how we see it, and I think that’s how it will continue to be going forward.”

That two-way road between Google’s mobile apps and its standalone Chrome operating system could be nothing more than a convenient philosophy, but looked at through the lens of brand uniformity and consistent user experiences, could the continued experimentation with Chrome OS be a way for Google to soon open up its Chrome browser to its cache of mobile apps as well?

And, by extension, could this be a way for Google to let users plug into its app ecosystem regardless of what device — say, an iPhone — they’re most likely to use?

The implications would be troubling for Cupertino. Despite all the hard work behind Apple Pay as the iPhone’s one and only digital wallet, the introduction of browser-based Android Pay might give users an option Apple never wanted them to have. If Google can make the turn with Chrome, the very presence of a library of apps not subject to the terms of Apple’s App Store would complicate its normal means of control. Would the normal 30 percent revenue fee cover Chrome-based Google apps even though they were never downloaded from, or even listed in, the App Store to begin with? Or would Apple simply ban the Chrome app from iPhone as a blunt force cure?

At this point, it’s all conjecture — but interesting conjecture at that. Chrome is the U.S.’s most popular browser, and the more time people spend on it, the more data Google collects. If it can use it to jump over the walls that Apple has erected over its steadily growing mobile ecosystem, it would seem a digital dereliction of duty not to push that thorn into the paw of one of its biggest competitors.