Update: The app is already available in some international App Stores and will hit the U.S. store soon.

Google just announced at Day 2 of Google I/O that Chrome for iPhone & iPad will come to the App Store later today for devices running iOS 4.3 or later. The app will feature many of the features present in other versions of the browser, including: Chrome sync, incognito mode, and its unique tab UI. Google also announced during the keynote that it would bring its recently launched Google Drive cloud service to iOS devices.

Chrome for iOS is about 3.5x slower at JavaScript than Safari thanks to the lack of Nitro. 7315ms in Sunspider — Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) June 28, 2012

As noted by Daring Fireball, the Chrome iOS app will have to rely on WebKit:

It’s not the Chrome rendering or JavaScript engines — the App Store rules forbid that. It’s the iOS system version of WebKit wrapped in Google’s own browser UI. The pressure for Apple to allow users to specify a third-party app as their default browser is going to increase significantly after this… I can’t see the angle behind not allowing a third-party app from the App Store to be specified as your preferred default over Mobile Safari. (Same goes for email.)

You can get coverage of the full event on 9to5Google.

There will be more Chrome users on iOS than Chrome users on Android. Since the Android version is ICS and later only. Ironic. — koush (@koush) June 28, 2012

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