I wouldn't describe the webapp as great. Since it attempts to emulate aspects of UIKit it suffers greatly from the uncanny valley effect. The performance and feel is poor compared to a native app.

I realise it's more convenient for Google, but I struggle to believe that's the primary concern when a company of their size develops an app for a platform with hundreds of millions of users.

To me it feels the app is intentionally crippled for some business reason. Perhaps it would be more difficut to target ads in a native app, or maybe they want to push people towards Android. As a user, I really don't care and it reflects poorly on them to produce a substandard experience for their users.

Roll on Sparrow for iOS.