Google today announced improvements to it's Gmail service for users running either iPhone or Android web browsers. You can expect opening email, navigating and searching to be "a lot faster". Google credits the improvements to aggressive caching and leveraging of new browser technologies like HTML5 and Gears.
More fallout from the Venture Beat story that Google removed multi-touch based upon Apple's request. John Gruber via Daring Fireball corroborates the report based on a source who works at Apple who said Google actually showed Apple legal a pre-release prototype of the G1.
In addition to multi-touch, Apple reportedly balked at the use of a standard 3.5mm headphone jack that seemed to infringe on a patent describing "controlling software using buttons connected by a standard 3.5mm jack".
One of the major drawbacks of the T-Mobile G1 is the lack of support for multi-touch. Several developers have proven that the hardware is capable of multi-touch support, so why did they leave it out? Could it be the well known patents owned by Apple that many believe will end up in display in a court room once Palm releases it's Pre? According to a report this morning in Venture Beat, a Google Android member goes on record saying that Apple asked Google not to implement multi-touch and Google complied.
Starting today, Google search on the iPhone and T-Mobile G1 will no longer be ad-free. Both phones offer the "real Internet" and now it's about to get more real as you'll start seeing sponsored ads in your searches. Advertisers can also target mobile users. Google is the default search engine on mobile Safari, a move that stands to offer them a substantial competitive advantage when targetting iPhone users. According to Alexandra Kenin, product marketing manager for Google's mobile ad team, "iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers" option in AdWords, advertisers also can exclude this class of devices from their ad campaigns."
Google researchers have come up with voice recognition technology for the iPhone that will work with the company's search software. The free application could find it's way into the App Store as early as today.
According to iPhone Hellas, the 2.2 firmware for the iPhone will be released on November 21. It should incorporate the features previously leaked from developers who had access to the first and second beta distributions, including Street View in Google Maps, the ability to turn off auto-correction for text entry, Japanese Emoji, changes to the App Store, and the ability to download podcasts directly in the iPod application.
What still appears to be missing is the push notification feature that was promised for October. There's been no word and few rumors about this feature, but it is still a hotly-anticipated one for many iPhone users. Of course, the iPhone is still missing other highly-desired features like copy and paste and MMS, but we can all hope and dream that Apple will throw something we're not expecting into this release.
Google might be preparing for the launch of the Android powered G1, but they are still very interested in the iPhone and a user base that will top 10 million by year's end. Being the default search engine for mobile Safari has a potential to be a money maker for Google and now comes word they are going to start offering options for advertisers to target iPhone owners directly.
Google has met with a number of ad agencies and shortly, they will be offering a new option to show an iPhone specific ads as part of a companies search campaign. While the iPhone has the capability to show the full Internet, the ads would be mobile specific. For example, and American Airlines ad could have a click to action that would call to book a flight.
