Google on the iPhone makes News, goes around the world and to your Apps domain

Thursday, May 1, 2008 | 10:25 AM



Google fürs iPhone jetzt auch in deutsch! Et en français .. en in het Nederlands and in many more languages. When we launched our new Google interface for the iPhone at Macworld in San Francisco last January, a number of you approached us at our booth and asked when you could use our new interface in your home country. (Yes, San Francisco IS a very cosmopolitan city.) I am happy to say: the time has come. Today we're launching our new integrated Google experience for the iPhone and iPod Touch in 33 new markets and 16 new languages, from Argentina to New Zealand, from Swedish to Chinese.

Google on the iPhone is a great way to access your most used Google services. Some of its benefits include

  • Fast and fluid search with one-tap access to News, image, local, or web results and search query suggestions when you start typing
  • Automatic delivery of Gmail messages (no need to refresh your browser!), and auto-completion of email addresses when typing
  • A combined month-and-current-day view of your always-in-sync Google Calendar, and the ability to share pictures with friends and family using Picasa Web Albums
Today we're also launching a special Google News edition for the iPhone. Browse the front page or search for results straight from the home page. Enjoy the full catalog of Google News sources and even watch associated YouTube content.

To try out the new Google interface, just point your iPhone or iPod Touch web browser to www.google.com.

Furthermore, if you use Google Apps - now is the time to use your domain name on the iPhone as well. Just bookmark http://www.google.com/m/a/YOURDOMAIN for fast one-click access to Google. Please make sure to replace YOURDOMAIN with your actual domain name.

13 comments:

cr0vax said...

As far as I know (I may be wrong 'cause I'm french not german) it's "für" not "fürs"

Unknown said...

Bonjour!
'fürs' is actually a short cut for 'für das' iPhone (for the iPhone).

Thanks though!
Ulf

et said...

I use google apps with my domain. when I click on "mail" on my iphone I get the following message:

"Sie sind als me@mydomain.com angemeldet
Abmelden"

what is in english:


"you are logged in as me@mydomain.com Logout"

The top bar is still there.
"Startpage - mail - docs - more"

how can I access my mail?

Alan Bradford said...

This is great! Now I can access my Arizona State University email account from my iPod.

Keep those updates coming! I'm anxious for when I can create a new document using my iPod...

Zach said...

Google still hasn't fixed the default search results page which has been broken since this was initially released. Prior to the launch of Google for iPhone, the search results made through Mobile Safari's search bar were formatted for mobile and looked really nice on the iPhone. Now the search results are the standard PC version and I have to double-tap and slide back and forth to see the results.

Back and forward buttons are still broken in this release also. If I'm in reader and click a link, read the article, then hit back - it takes me to the search page and not reader. This really sucks if I want to go back and mark the RSS entry as unread or star it.

There is another problem with reader on the iPhone. When viewing images that are too wide, reader will shrink the size and put a plus sign on the bottom of the image. Very nice. Except for when I hit the plus sign and the image is now wide Safari will not allow me to scroll right or left to view the image. This is especially frustrating ready dilbert (http://feeds.feedburner.com/DilbertDailyStrip).

I'm sorry to be such a downer, but the quality just isn't anywhere near Google's typical quality. All of the issues listed above have appeared after I bought my iPhone. In the beginning, there were none of these problems.

To make you feel better, I did try Yahoo on the iPhone. It looks incredible, but the results suck compared to Google.

Zach

Unknown said...

To be honest, this is both encouraging and frustrating for me. I use a Nokia N810 for my mobile internet, and I love that there are more sites being made that are finger friendly, and non-resource intensive.

What I don't like is that they are mostly designed for the iPhone, and nothing else. In my case, the google sites and facebook pages for the iPhone don't accurately work with the browser window height. I always have a tiny bit off the bottom of the screen, which can often give me two scroll bars, and complicate using finger drags to scroll. I don't really understand why the issue manifests itself like this, since the N810 has a higher resolution and therefore larger browser window (creating plenty of other problems with button sizes requiring zooming in) that I would expect to have the opposite affect.

It's nice to have the improvement, but I'd like to see it less tied in to a single browser/device.

Unknown said...

Hi, my name is Aaron Sherman, and I have some thoughts on the new format of mobile Google News. I really liked the old mobile Google News for the following reasons: 1) it linked to mobile editions of news sources, which always loaded on my iPhone relatively quickly compared to the full-site articles mobile Google News now links to; 2) it presented a few brief, concise headlines from all sections on one page, making it easy for me to quickly scroll through the day's news and know a little bit about everything, rather than have to take more tim to navigate through repetitive headlines and brief story intros (and that's just on the Front Page!) and then the same thing in the respective sections. Perhaps you could make the Front Page like how it used to be, and encorporate an "iGoogle Mobile"-esque form of clicking on headlines once to see the brief paragraph about the story, then clicking on the brief paragraph to be taken to the mobile site for the actual story? The section navigation and stuff is cool, especially on an iPhone, but if you could make those changes to the Front Page, I would really appreciate it.

Shana said...

seconding Zach's comment --
the default search engine should point to google mobile search results!

I never go to google to search - i use the search bar. and the results of those searches should go directly to the iphone-optimized site, not the PC site which is printed so small!

Daryl said...

Okay .. so now that its looking nice on the web, when will the iPhone email/gmail app get the same look .. huh .. huh ....

:-Daryl

Unknown said...

What I dont get is why the GApps tem is so freaking focused on the phreaking iPhone.

The rest of us (I have a WM6 based phone for example) could use jsut as much of the goodness as the iPhone folks.

Fat Splenda said...

The only thing missing is the option to apply labels... if I want to label an email, I have to go into the stupid HTML version of my Gmail page. Boo!

Seth Rubenstein said...

I really like the Google Mobile interface for the iPhone but it would be so much better if the now official Google Mobile App for iPhone 2.0 and the search button in mobileSafari would point you to the mobile version of Google. WTF? Anyone know how to force Safari to search the Google Mobile interface?

Unknown said...

Same here, would be nice to have Safari mobile search form pointing at google mobile.