Google's iPhone-specific search website

It appears that Google has released a mobile-accessible search page just for iPhone users, which sent us scratching our heads a bit. Isn't the iPhone supposed to give customers "the real web?" If so, why has Google developed a bare-bones search page that appears to be just for iPhone customers? Perhaps this is a work in progress, but since the Safari browser on the iPhone has no problems going to the normal Google search website or Google's xHTML page, what's the point here? Unless you really (really) want a bare-bones Google search page on that new iPhone that doesn't even feature many of Google's search properties, we suggest hitting www.google.com. Sounds pretty easy to us.

[via TUAW]

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 24th 2007 11:01PM]

Although you can use the iPhone to browse regular web sites, and the UI is the best so far for doing that on any mobile devices, it still doesn't beat the usability of a site specifically designed for the iPhone. A lot of sites like Digg have designed interfaces specifically for iPhone. So it does make sense to have a search index that contains sites that are iPhone-optimized.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 26th 2007 9:52AM]

also does it look like it has larger text so that it's probably easier for fingers?

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 25th 2007 2:38AM]

I hope to god that many many more sites set themselves up for it. While google is built into the safari browser and doesn't really need to ever be visited, most other sites could be optimized so that zooming in and scrolling around isn't necessary. The iphone is not the same resolution as your laptop, regardless of the browsers capabilities.