Despite the fact that Google hasn’t made an official announcement that a special interface for iPhone users has launched, it has. TechCrunch initially reported yesterday that an anonymous tipster informed them that it had launched, and sure enough, it had. The image to the right shows you what this interface will look like on the iPhone. It has links to Gmail, the Google Calendar, Google Reader, and there’s also a “more” link that will direct you to more Google services. Those services include Docs, GOOG-411, SMS, News, Photos, Blogger, or Google Notebook.
For those who use Google services regularly, this will be great because everything is nicely integrated into one interface that suites the iPhone perfectly. According to a sample of people who have used it, everything actually loads pretty fast too. The nice navigation bar at the top means users will be able to quickly jump from Gmail to their Calendar, to the Reader, and back to Google’s homepage again without extra clicks. The navigation bar will always be at the top, no matter where you’ve navigated to on the google.com/m site.
As I was browsing around the web today, I came across people who were pouting and saying “it’s not fair! Why does the iPhone get special attention from Google and get their own page?” I can see why people are a bit annoyed, but really, it’s not hard to understand why Google is doing this. Given the popularity of the iPhone since it launched and its continued popularity, sites are going to want to cater to it. On the other hand, I find it ironic that the iPhone was supposed to be better than any other phone for browsing the Internet and viewing web pages as they are, yet many sites like Google and Facebook feel that it’s necessary to create something special for it.
Source: jkOnTheRun
I wonder how long this Google-Apple love affair will continue. Since there was not any “real” Gphone I guess we’ll see how long this thing can last.
I’m thinking that employees are just using their “20% time” to create these apps. It’s probably just done by a few guys that happen to have an iPhone and thought it would be fun to do. I’m guessing they won’t have a lot time to add new features, but it is cool that they were created in the first place.
The interesting thing about the iPhone is that pages can make nicer interfaces for the iPhone, because they don’t need to worry about space, resizing, zooming etc. They also have a set standard of look and feel to work with – the whole tab/slide interface can be implemented. Interestingly enough pages like Netvibes can incorporate these iPhone sites into their personalised home pages, allowing you to have a number of your most recently looked at pages in minimal form arrayed almost like windows on a desktop. The web operating system thus advances ever closer.
Oh, I’m sure it’ll last for quite a while! I don’t see either Google or Apple losing popularity any time soon…
I can see why they would make special pages, since the screen is so darn small. I’m sure it’s more of a usability problem though. I did notice that Google’s million dollar “I’m Feeling Lucky” button is mysteriously absent…
The most interesting thing to watch will be how the iPhone competes with Google’s Android OS.
Actually, the iPhone browser only has a marketshare of less than 1% afaik. A lot of people are talking about it but not many people have one. Opera Mini, Opera-based, webkit-based (Nokia I believe) and Pocket IE have larger marketshares (for now), but hardly any sites are optimized for those.
I suppose it has to do with the whole experience thing, mainly regarding the interface and touchscreen interaction. It’s a whole new way of browsing sites, and I believe *that* is what the iPhone sites are catering for. They can be browsed on the iPod Touch as well by the way
Ha! That’s funny. I guess they’re trying to phase it out a little bit at a time.
Opera Mini isn’t even at a 1% marketshare yet, and I would say that the iPhone is probably at 10% or 20% of them. Heck, there are only a handful of browsers that have more than 1% of the marketshare.
iPhone at 10-20% of all webbrowser-enabled phones?? As you can read here:
[itwire.com.au]
Apple is shooting for 1% market share of all phones, although it seems 6% is possible.
As for mobile device marketshare on the web, it seems the iPhone is already #1, so if these numbers are correct, I stand corrected:
[iphonenano.net]
That would mean that people who have an iPhone/iPod Touch use the browser MUCH MUCH more than people who have any other mobile device. Impressive. It’s still just 0.09% though, while Opera claims 0.41% market share for their Mini browser:
[operawatch.com]
Those numbers cannot be found on the iPhone market share page, which is rather confusing to me.. they should be!
If we assume that both numbers are correct, there are currently 4.5x more Opera Mini users than iPhone-Safari users. Not that big a difference, so I can definitely understand why all these new iPhone-specific sites are being developed.
Thanks for the stat update! I imagine that as the iPhone spreads around the world that their marketshare will continue to go up rather quickly. Not to mention all of the people who don’t want to jump on the 1st generation iPhone.