Not all Google users are Android users.
Wherever you lie on the spectrum, Google-on-iOS is a pretty decent setup.
I decided to see just how seamless it is to replace most of Apples default apps with Googles alternatives.
Google has implemented a pretty genius trick to get around, this, though.
Once you do, youll never need to leave Googles apps.
Many third-party apps support this feature too.
For example,Tweetbothas a setting to choose between Safari or Chrome as your surfing app of choice.
Many others have the same option, effectively making it possible to almost never open Safari by default.
The best of these include Google Maps, the Drive suite of apps, and surprisingly, Photos.
I was most surprised by Google Photos.
IhateApples various photos solutions, instead relying on Dropbox and Flickr as my two photo backup solutions.
Google Photos is a fantastic replacement to the clunky, expensive, and hard-to-properly-use iCloud Photos.
Another surprise is Play Newstand, which does what Apple News does, but a little better.
And yes, as youd expect, Play Newstand makes it easy to open all those links in Chrome.
Hangouts has an uncanny knack of failing to send notifications sometimes.
No matter how much you love Google, Hangouts and Google Voice are borderline unusable.
Google also tends to update its iOS offerings much later than its Android apps.
Even Hangouts is lacking the basic reply from notification feature found in just about every messaging app in existence.
Theres also a few places where Google fails that dont bother me, but might annoy others.
Using Google Now in place of Siri is exactly as cumbersome as youd expect.
Personally, I use voice control so rarely that it made little difference to me.
Still, if you want to replace Siri with Google Now, youre out of luck.
Googles apps are solid, but they cant get into Apples ecosystem deep enough to replace core functionality.
Googles apps still dont beat out their Android counterparts, either.
So, the Gmail app is only useful if you have an @gmail.com address.
Inbox works the same way.
This means that no matter what, youll be using multiple messaging apps to talk with different people.
Ive always been a bit skeptical of Googles offerings on iOS.
Now, theyre all a pretty easy recommendation as some of the best alternatives to Apples apps.
Illustration by Tara Jacoby.
