Which is still just a UIWebView in the Chrome dressing because Apple won't permit Google to run their own Javascript or document rendering engines on iOS.
That's a totally separate issue, with completely valid security concerns (although sounds like an implementation issue that should be rethought).
It very much duplicates the core functionality of Safari, just as Google Voice does for the Phone and Messages apps. And GV was what both started and eventually ended that whole "duplicate functionality" debacle.
I have a web browser for iOS that does its own HTML rendering, and has been available in the store for many years now. Before CoreText was available, even. It doesn't deal with Javascript though, so you may have a point there.
