Google Quietly Drops iPhone Optimized iGoogle Page

I reported this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google seems to have quietly dropped the iPhone version of the iGoogle page. The iPhone iGoogle page used to be at google.com/ig/i, but when iPhone users navigate to google.com/ig/i they are redirected to the standard mobile iGoogle page at google.com/m/ig. Google said the reason they […]

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I reported this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google seems to have quietly dropped the iPhone version of the iGoogle page. The iPhone iGoogle page used to be at google.com/ig/i, but when iPhone users navigate to google.com/ig/i they are redirected to the standard mobile iGoogle page at google.com/m/ig.

Google said the reason they dropped the iPhone version was because they “want to ensure you’ll all see the same version” of the iGoogle mobile page. But Google made no official announcement on this change. I found this by viewing a thread where it seems like hundreds of iPhone users are upset with this change.

It seems like the change started on Thursday, and, as soon as it happened, many iPhone users began complaining. The large thread I pointed to above has 140 or so comments, but there are dozens of other threads about this change.

So, what is the big deal? Well, Google made a huge deal about having iPhone optimized sites for many of their services, including iGoogle. They have many Google optimized iPhone sites and have promoted them time and time again. So why drop iGoogle without an announcement?


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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