Google releases two new productivity apps for iOS

Until today, you had to use the Dropbox-like Google Drive app or web interface to access Google Docs on iOS. But now Google has official apps to work on documents and spreadsheets, called Google Docs and Google Sheets. An app for presentations called Slides is coming soon. You can view, edit, and share any documents or spreadsheets stored in your Google account through the apps. And unlike Office for iPad, everything is free.

Google announced its Drive cloud storage service just over two years ago, if you can believe it. Drive competes with Dropbox, OneDrive, and other cloud services, but at the time it also consumed Google Docs, the company’s Web-based productivity suite. To view and edit any documents you created in the Web version of Drive on your phone or tablet, you’ve always needed to install and use the Google Drive app, but Google has now altered course a bit: the company just released new, standalone Google Docs and Google Sheets productivity apps for Android and iOS, breaking document and spreadsheet editing out from the Drive app for the first time on mobile devices. The apps are compatible with iPhones and iPads running iOS 7 and Android phones and tablets running version 4.0 or newer. Slides, an app for creating and editing presentations, is “coming soon.”