Google Apps

With Google's latest generation of better designed iOS apps, including Google+, Gmail, YouTube, Google Search, Google Maps, Chrome, and more, the iPhone 5 is once again among the very best Google phones on the planet. iOS may not enjoy the deep integration into everything Google that Android does, but for most things, the overall performance of the iPhone, and the ability to use the best of Google alongside the best of Apple, all on one device, makes for an incredibly compelling experience.

And it's been a while since any Apple or Google user could attest to that with anything approaching conviction.

Google has just updated their Google+ social networking app for iOS to version 4.0, and among the new and improved features is support for Google+ Communities, the ability to set timezones and indicate guest numbers in events, profile editing, a new compose interface, and a new design for visual stream.

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The iPad version of the Google Search app received a pretty big update today. It features a revamped UI that provides feedback the moment you begin to type. After tapping a result, the page with load in a a new slide-in pane so that you can continue to scroll through results while it loads. You can also check out snapshots of pages you've visited in the new carousel view.

Check out the video of Google Search for iPad in action below.

Google Mobile App for iPhone has just added Google Goggles support. Goggles is the awesomely named camera-search based service that debuted on Android and lets you find information about something just by taking a picture of it.

In the new version of Google Mobile App just tap on the camera button to search using Goggles. Goggles will analyze the image and highlight the objects it recognizes -- just click on them to find out more.

You can see how it works in the video after the break. It's totally Star Trek, but it's also still a work in progress according to Google:

Computer vision is a hard problem and Google Goggles is still a Labs product. It works well for things such as landmarks, logos and the covers of books, DVDs and games. However, it doesn’t yet work for some things you might want to try like animals, plants or food.

Get it, it's hot.

[iTunes link via Google Mobile Blog]