iGoogle falls out of love with iPhone

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 21 Jan 2009 at 11:49

Google has quietly pulled the iGoogle website that had been tailored specifically for iPhone customers.

The iPhone-specific version of the site was optimised for the smartphone's Safari browser and lumped all the page content into a single column, making it easier to browse. It also featured expandable and collapsable section headers, making it simple for iPhone users to get at the content they wanted.

However, visitors to the site are now redirected to the standard iGoogle page that the rest of the smartphone world gets. Google made no mention of the change until users started complaining on its support forum, at which point a company representative piped up:

"We decided to direct iPhone users to the standard mobile iGoogle Page. We've found that people hit iGoogle from lots of different phones - we want to ensure you'll all see the same version," he writes. "Most or all of your existing content should translate over to the standard mobile version. The only exception would be any gadgets that aren't compatible with most mobile browsers."

The change has been met with dismay from iPhone users. "I am not happy with the change," reads one post on the Google support forums. "I don't have the option of seeing how many entries in the RSS feed that I want to view. I am not able to view all the feeds from my iGoogle page. I have to load and step through multiple pages.. it's awful. I liked the separation with the multiple menus before. This is not any better and it appears to be severely limiting."

It was a sentiment echoed right the way through the forums: "The iPhone specific interface was a great feature and for Google to remove it intentionally is an indication it no longer intends to support Apple and its products to the best of its ability. Google needs to fix this and put it back the way it was, or a lot of people are going to be angry."