Todays post is a 2009 midyear round up of the status of the Google Mobile applications: Latitude, Voice, Docs, Mail, Maps and Reader. My focus is on the iPhone mobile platform. Google Latitude Google Latitude is their location and status message product. The application up until now has been available on other phone platforms such as Android, but lacking on iPhone. In the mean time, iPhone users have had to look elsewhere.

In a move that is a win for the end user, Sensis and Google have signed a commercial agreement to allow users to find Yellow (previously known as Yellow Pages) business listings on Google Maps. “The agreement means Yellow™ advertisers can now potentially be found by more customers than ever before. They can be found in our print and online directories, over the phone, in a growing range of satellite navigation devices, on mobile phones, on search engines and on online mapping sites, which now includes the popular Google Maps”

Only 2 months ago I wrote that Gmail had hit 4GB, but it was still behind the main crowd (MSN, Yahoo, etc). Well in time for the new year, they have finally hit the 6GB (not 6GiB yet!) limit. This was initially picked up by a number of bloggers including WikiGiz and BBCentral. I’ve totally cutover to Gmail since they enabled IMAP and I figured out how to turn it on.

For a long time I used google maps over the local provider, WhereiS (a Telstra/Sensis product). Even though google maps had less local content, WhereiS was so 1999 in its web design that it was unusable. Basic dragging of the maps which is now a staple of so many online map providers, was one of the basic missing pieces of functionality. But recently they have updated their online maps, which can now be accessed as a Beta version.

Recently Gmail activated IMAP for selected accounts, and I appeared to not be one of them. However was it really for selected accounts or was it for ‘selected languages’?! Reading about gmail on digg led me to an un-dug comment (I gave him a thumbs up!) saying that for IMAP to appear your language in gmail had to be set to ‘English (US)’. So I gave it a try, as I had mine on ‘English (UK)’ for the spelling.

I am coming back to earth with my posts, and thinking about Google. They are growing by acquiring technology and companies. They release new products like the Java/Linux based Android (Is linking to google news about Google considered irony?!). How long before Google exceed Microsoft? I remember when their shares where $100. Then months ago I was discussing with friends that $600 was an amazing price to reach. Then weeks ago was amazed that each share had grown from $600 to $670.

According to the Download Squad Google’s Gmail has just integrated IMAP. This in conjunction with the recent storage space is the second big thing for google in the mail arena in recent days. I applaud them for this move as the POP3 access they previously offered was great for desktop PC’s but difficult for mobile devices. I can confirm that it appears to be only in select accounts, because as of now, I still only have POP access.