Well, it seems that what I thought was a revision to iGoogle for the iPhone was in fact just Google redirecting everyone to the standard iGoogle mobile version, dropping the iPhone version completely. I also don’t seem to be the only person completely pissed off about it and swearing Google’s name.
I found the following explanation from a Google employee on the Google support pages, which had a lot of angry people sounding off:
Hey everyone, I have an update for you. We’ve 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.
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.
Honestly, Google, if you’re listening, this was the stupidest decision I’ve seen you make yet. Your iPhone support had been so great and suddenly you fuck all of us iPhone users without even any notice. Not only am I pissed off because we’re losing some great functionality that I used on a daily basis, but also because it tarnishes my view of Google, which up until now, I believed could do no wrong. Well, you did wrong Google. You really fucked it up on this one. As I was discussing with someone on Twitter, more people need to get angry about this and they need to create some visible public outcry.
If you’re as pissed off as I am about this majorly bone-headed move my Google that basically tells us iPhone users that we don’t matter anymore, then go over to this discussion and tell Google how upset you are.
P.S. Google, your new favicon also sucks!
UPDATE: I found a partial fix, check it out.
January 17, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I hope this does create an uproar!
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January 18, 2009 at 5:00 am
Dugg
http://digg.com/apple/iGoogle_for_iPhone_is_gone_Google_you_suck
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January 19, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Hi– Great find– your partial fix works great, but if I move from one tab to another, it goes back to /m/ig.
Somebody else posted the fact that you can go to google.com/ig/i from any other platform and it works, which suggests that they are identifying iphones to single them out for redirect… any way you know of to fool igoogle into not recognizing the iphone, and thinking it’s another platform? Not sure my logic works, but then I’m not a genuine geek, so all I can do is conjecture….
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peter Reply:
January 19th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
There is actually a way to do what you’re talking about. You have to have your iPhone jailbroken and install an app called Useragent Faker from Cydia. Then you fake your browser’s (MobileSafari’s) user agent string using one from a desktop browser, and iGoogle will load properly. I haven’t tried it myself, but it might be a full fix. The only problem is that any iPhone optimized site you might visit would require you to turn the useragent faker off if you wanted to see the iPhone version.
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