Google Loves iPhone ?

Google Loves iPhone ? Even with the competing mobile platform, Android, that Google is currently pushing to develop, it seems that the higher-ups at Google really like the iPhone.

Sergey Brin, one of Google's presidents, flat-out loves his own personal iPhone - especially the Google Maps My Location feature.

The feature actually helped Brin find his way to a hotel recently, without the aid of GPS position data. “I was at a conference in Switzerland,” he said, presumably referring to the World Economic Forum conference in Davos. “I was able to find a really small hotel, then switch over to the satellite view on my phone to figure out I needed to take a funicular to get up there. It was a really amazing experience.”

Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s senior vice president for product management, said that, "[Google is] particularly interested in looking at the iPhone because the Web browsing experience is so good, and because of the optimization work we did.

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, is not only leading Google towards an Android-world, he is on the board of directors at Apple. This might seem like a contradiction of interests (not necessarily a conflict of interests) but Google seems to be interested in developing for the iPhone as a sort of practice-run for its own Android applications. And, with most mobile traffic coming from iPhones, Google thinks that any iPhone development will only lead to generating more ad-revenue for the search-giant.

Schmidt stated that, “The iPhone is the first of a whole generation of products that will be much more search intensive…With those search opportunities comes ad monetization.”

It sounds like Google and Apple will be getting even cozier on iPhone development. This can only mean we'll be getting better functionality with every firmware update, and it will probably mean that Android handsets will ship with amazing applications. Experience is key in the mobile space, and Google's work with the iPhone may just help them push out some great Android features.

Also worth mentioning is that Google is getting most of its mobile web traffic from the iPhone. This lead Eric Schmidt, Google CEO and Apple board member, to state that even though Google is developing their own mobile OS the iPhone will make Google money, in the form of web ad revenues.