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Google has just become the latest Web site to create an iPhone-specific portal, the third major iPhone initiative for the search Giant. It is also the default search engine on Apple's smartphone (Yahoo! is an option as well) and delivered Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) access to Gmail not too long ago

Google.com for iPhone
The next time you try to go to Google.com from an iPhone, instead of the standard Google desktop portal, which you had been getting, you'll be directed to a new iPhone-specific Google user interface (see top image).

This iPhone-optimized Web page is, interestingly, quite different than the one Google delivers to other types smartphones. It's got that iPhone look and feel. As you can see from the pictures in this article, the Google iPhone portal sports a user interface quite similar to other iPhone-optimized Web sites and applications.

In addition to the good old Google search box, the Google iPhone site offers direct access to Gmail, Calendar, Reader and More. When you click on this last link, the portal leads you to direct access to some additional Google services, including Docs, SMS, GOOG-411, News, Photos, Blogger and Notebook.

Google recommends you bookmark this page (see below) separately from the main iPhone Google page so you can gain faster access to these services.

So why are Google and others creating these iPhone-specific portals?

Although the iPhone's Safari browser delivers one of the best Internet experiences of any mobile browser, it is still far from perfect. It's not quite, as Steve Jobs has asserted, the real Web.

As a result, a lot of Web sites—like Amazon.com and now Google, for example—have created more streamlined, iPhone-friendly portals. Heck, even Apple, with its excellent HTML-based Wi-Fi iTunes application, decided to streamline things and not deliver the full iTunes desktop experience to iPhone users.

Also, the iPhone is one of (if not the) fastest selling smartphones in history. Apple thinks it can sell 10 million next year alone, for instance, and has exceeded sales its sales goals for this year already. With the iPhone starting to roll out in markets outside the U.S., its popularity can only increase.

Consequently, for Web sites, providing fast and easy access to applications and services to the iPhone is becoming increasingly important to doing business. Best to make sure you give the ever growing number of iPhone users the best access you can to your online services and, it would seem, make that experience as close as possible to what users are already familiar with, the iPhone user interface.

As for me, whenever I head over to Amazon.com on the iPhone, I ignore the iPhone-specific interface and head over to the standard Amazon.com Web site.

Google Search for iPhone
Sure, the iPhone's Safari browser isn't perfect, but for basic Web surfing from a mobile device it can't be beat. View full Web pages on the iPhone's sharp, bright and large display. Zoom in on a section you want to read with a pinch of two fingers on the touch screen and out by pulling them apart. A flick of your finger and you’re quickly scrolling through a page.

Another nice feature of Safari is how easy Apple's makes it to perform an Internet search.

Tap the Address Bar to open up a small Search Window. Tap that Window and type in your search term(s) or phrase and hit the Blue Button on the lower right-hand side of the iPhone's keyboard, which popped up back when you first tapped the Address Bar.


Safari Safari After Touching Address Bar

And while Google is the default search engine for Safari, Apple makes it simple enough for you to go with Yahoo! instead, if that's your preference.

To change from Google to Yahoo!, simply push your iPhone's Home button to go to the Home screen > Touch the Settings icon > Select Safari > Select Yahoo! That's it.


Choose Your Prefered Search Engine

The next time you launch Safari and tap on the Address Bar, instead of seeing the word Google in the Search Window that opens, you'll see Yahoo!. And when you tap on the Search Window, the Blue Key on the keyboard that says Go in Address Bar mode, will now say Yahoo! instead of Google in Search mode.


Yahoo! Search In Safari Google Search In Safari

A Yahoo! search takes you to a results page that has been optimized for the iPhone. Performing a Google search, however, takes you to the same results page you'd see if you did the same search on a desktop.


Yahoo! Search Results Google Search Results

Google I-Maps Gmail to iPhone
A few weeks ago, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) came to Gmail. What this meant for smartphone and handheld users, especially iPhone owners, is a far smoother and easier to manage mob-e-mail experience.

That's because IMAP synchronizes your inbox across all the devices you use, be it desktop or palmtop, instantly and automatically. So if you read or write an e-mail on your iPhone, for example, the changes you make in Gmail are reflected when you got to access messages on your desktop.

This is quite different from POP-based e-mail, which Gmail has always supported. With POP, you can pull messages down to a mobile device from a mail server, but the changes your make to your inbox on your smartphone, for instance, aren't automatically reflected when you go to access your e-mail somewhere else.

So the next time you access your inbox from your desktop, all the messages will stream in as unread or new (even if you've opened them already on your smartphone), making it difficult to differentiate between e-mail you've already read or managed and those messages that are really new.

With the iPhone, you can access your Gmail account through the smartphone's Mail application or through Safari at m.gmail.com.

Although accessing Gmail through the mobile Web site gives you the same Gmail features you get through a browser on your desktop, most iPhone users will want to use the smartphone’s native Mail application.

To do this, the first thing you do is enable IMAP in your Gmail account from your PC or Mac. Click here for directions on how to do that.

Next, on the iPhone, you need to setup a new mail account. You do this by tapping Other in Settings --> Mail --> Add Account. Although Gmail is represented in the list (along with Yahoo! Mail, .Mac, and AOL), do not tap it. Currently, this will only let you setup a POP account. This is a problem Google says it is working on.

After tapping Other, you need to fill out your account settings, making sure IMAP is highlighted. The Host Name is imap.gmail.com and your user name is your full Gmail address. The Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) Host Name is smtp.gmail.com.

Click here for Google's detailed directions on how to setup IMAP-based Gmail on your iPhone.