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In another of many recent mobile-oriented announcements, Google rolled out a new application that provides iPhone users with a more intuitive way to access Google's online services.

The application will give iPhone users the ability to switch between such Google services as search, Gmail, Calendar, and Reader by clicking on the navigation bar at the top.

To access the application, iPhone users need simply to point their web browser to Google's home page, which automatically detects the Apple handset and Safari as the client browser, rendering the new application in place of the Google start page.

Steve Kanefsky, a software engineer for Google's mobile team, explains that he began to redesign Google's home page for iPhone users after the iPhone launched to make better use of its touch screen, Wi-Fi, and Safari browser.

"I started thinking about how to use Ajax technology to improve Google on the iPhone," Kanefsky said. "I set out to create an application that would preload my favorite Google products and allow me to switch between them instantly. I wanted Web results as well as image, local, and news results without having to repeat my search. I wanted to check Gmail and my news feeds in Google Reader without having to load a new page every time. I also wanted Google Suggest to save me time typing queries on the virtual keyboard."

The question of why Google chose to launch on the iPhone first appears to have more to do with technology than with market size potential. Because the application is given away free, Google has more freedom in selecting which markets it wants to play in first, not having to worry about market size and potential customer base.

"Traditionally, switching between applications on a mobile device is slow, but what you'll see here is that we've made it blazingly fast," said Gummi Hafsteinsson, product manager with Google's mobile development team.

Hafsteinsson noted that Google was able to take advantage of the same browser technologies supported by Apple's Safari's browser, such as Ajax, that it's used in the desktop versions of GMail and Google Maps.

In addition, because Safari supports AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and HTML), which allows the system to fetch information in the background and enables the software to predict where the user will go next, it can prefetch information for the next step, making performance when switching between applications faster.


Currently four popular applications (Google search, Gmail, Calendar and Reader) are displayed first and you click "more" to get to other applications such as Docs, GOOG-411, SMS, News, Photos, Blogger, and Notebook.

Following internal testing at Google, the new interface now appears to iPhone users who visit google.com.