I disagree. The beauty of Android is that Google canwrite *native* apps that run on the phone rather than relying on the browser.

I think the reason we've seen so many cool iPhone versions of Google services is far simpler – lot's of Googlers use iPhones.

Don't forget, the reason GMail *finally* supported IMAP was for the iPhone users at the 'plex. I think what we're seeing is the result of lots of iPhone users using their 20% time to generate iPhone specific interfaces for the services they like.

Small nitpick: Android applications are written in Java. "Installing Android SDK" says:
"Android does not currently support development of third party applications in native code (C/C++)."

"...third party applications..."

Which isn't to say that Google's developers won't be able to write Google applications in native code (C/C++). Just that we can't. Yet.

kmike: apple sasys "iPhone does not currently support development of third party applications!"

topic: i believe in an iphone v2 with android! ;-)

btw,
http://news.morningstar.com/news/ViewNews.asp?article=/DJ/200712181343DOWJONESDJONLINE000564_univ.xml&Cat=MktDigest

Not sure but, I think this is the actual link to the interface.

http://www.google.com/m/gp

> http://www.google.com/m/gp

Hmmm... the iPhone interface uses "gp" in its URL? What could that stand for? On a related note, I'm amazed that the login page for that UI is served via HTTP rather than HTTPS:

http://www.google.com/m/html/gplogin.html

You can even change it to HTTPS!

wouldn't hold your breath on 'Droid.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20071220/tc_nf/57327

Brinke –

Great – judge a Google product based on a review from a Yahoo! Web-site. :) (hehe)

<<Hmmm... the iPhone interface uses "gp" in its URL? What could that stand for? >>

Grand Prix.

<<Hmmm... the iPhone interface uses "gp" in its URL? What could that stand for? >>

GooglePlex

No, it's Grand Prix (that's not a guess).

GoogleTalk, one of Google's most popular services next to Gmail among my friends, depends on flash for the web and thus isnt iphone friendly...

Mark:
Use Meebo http://meebo.com to access Google Talk and other IM networks. It should have an iPhone interface.

<<No, it's Grand Prix (that's not a guess).>>

I was just kidding. BTW How do you know? Why isn't it GPhone?

Any guesses for the other iphone URLs?

Has anyone tried using this URL (or other iphone URLs) in the Android emulator? Pic would be nice ...

Mark M

Good call re GTalk ... i wonder what the Blackberry Client uses

Check it out .... android meets iphone ...

   http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/jdbradford/Android/photo#5146143210901716002

Philipp:
Small fix needed: "another another reason"

Also, in the list of Google apps which use Flash you forgot the most prominent examples: Google Video and YouTube.

I wonder if anyone knows what format and URL is used by the YouTube app for IPhone? I'm interested in checking whether they rescale the video or decrease quality to save bandwidth. If not, it could be an easy method to download YT videos for offline use and possibly in a better format than FLV (I have small issues with playing FLV in mplayer).

Can't get the "gp" URL working in Safari for Windows (grrr) or Opera

The WSJ article is pretty biased, not sure why. On his own site Adam MacBeth is much less scathing than the WSJ article seems to imply.

The WSJ article also doesn't specify any particular failings just generally describes it as missing 'shockingly' basic functionality. Again, based on Adam's comments elsewhere he's mainly disappointed by the lack of native (c/c++) coding support and the missing low-level APIs (bluetooth / wifi/ etc).

I think most of the disappointment people have expressed is because:
a) They don't want to write apps in Java (they want c/c++)
b) The specific APIs they wanted (bluetooth etc) aren't yet available.

Which is fair enough, but it's still early days...

jon bradford – try Firefox it should work there.

> Small fix needed: "another another reason"

Thanks, fixed!

Reto: part of the specific criticism given is that Google is "unresponsive" apparently. (Not sure if that's true, but that's what the article says.)

... and hey what's this, I am shocked, non-obfuscated JavaScript code on Google.com?! Line breaks and spacing, variable names make sense, we can actually read it and *learn*? ;)
http://www.google.com/m/js/gp.js

Article was picked up on InformationWeek:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/12/are_google_ipho.html

Philipp: Interestingly I wasn't able to find posts by *any* of the programmers named in the article in the Android Google Group. Of course it's possible that they didn't use their full / real names... It's true that the Google Android team hasn't been very forthcoming at this point. I'm hoping that they take a leaf out of the Mashup Editor and GData teams' books and really start interacting with developers.

if i surf to google.com/m on my ipod touch i get this interface, without /m/gp!

bzw, the help is here: http://www.google.com/m/i/help

stefan2904

Any idea what the iphone picasa page is?

jon, I think it's this one:

http://picasaweb.google.com/m

It displays differently if your User Agent is the same as the iPhone.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2222/2126600851_dd6206d27e_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2019/2127376128_efb72e77c9_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2317/2126600949_fc58800bd0_o.jpg

Interesting theory. It is possible that they are currently using the iphone as a beta test.

[Signature URL removed – Tony]

Everything is a beta test.

hmm.. picasa on my iPod looks different...

you jailbroke your ipod then stefan :D

This is what it looks like on my iPod

"Gallery" Page:
http://aycu10.webshots.com/image/36049/2005451595761559684_rs.jpg

"Album" Page:
http://aycu40.webshots.com/image/35399/2005496902291024769_rs.jpg

Comments:
http://aycu02.webshots.com/image/39441/2005423357623623936_rs.jpg

Slideshow:
http://aycu10.webshots.com/image/36689/2005477355245085005_rs.jpg

yes, its not picasaweb.google.com or so, its google.com/m -> more -> picasa.

of course my ipod is jailbroaken :-)

oh, sorry, i never use it that way...

<ot> whats you rfavourite app you have installed?

I think the only worthwhile apps are the iPhone ones, others are ok but not great, the RSS app could be good if you could add by url...</ot>

<ot>yes, mail.app but also the vt100 terminal, ssh/sftp, instant messenger and the style apps like summerboard and customize are nice! </ot>

Johns name now links to a parked domain :O

<ot>summerboard changes make it slow, and leave some icons out...</ot>

Thanks James... I nofollowed the link now until I cleared up what's happening...

he probably forgot to renew his domain

<ot>slow... maybe;
leaving out icons.... no, ever scrolled to the 2nd page?
</ot>