Google Improves Google News on More Mobile Devices

Google has announced a new Google News for iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre users. The company already offers one for other devices like Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and S60, although they say more improvements to those versions will be coming soon, as well.

Today's new version includes a new Google News homepage, which shows more stories, sources, and images, but keeps the same basic look and feel.

"Also, you can now reach your favorite sections, discover new ones, find articles and play videos in fewer clicks," says Google's Mobile News Team. "If you are an existing Google News reader on desktop, you will find that all of your personalizations are honored in this mobile version too."

Google News for mobile is currently available in 29 languages and 70 editions.

In other recent Google-related mobile news, AdMob, which Google recently acquired, has unveiled a new interactive video ad unit for the iPhone. Google also acquired Gizmo5, a VoIP firm, which will see VoIP integration with Google Voice, and Google Latitude introduced location history and smart alerts.

On the news search front, today Yahoo began incorporating tweets into its search results for select news stories.

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Opera Mini Mobile Browser Reaches Milestone

Mobile web browser Opera Mini has reached a significant milestone. Opera announced that Opera Mini users viewed more than 10 billion pages in one month.

The company released its "State of the Mobile Web" report(pdf) this week, and it reveals some other interesting findings as well:

- In June, Opera had about 26.5 million unique users, which was an increase of 4.2% from the previous month, and a 143% increase from the previous year

- The 26.5 million unique users viewed more than 10.4 billion pages in June

- In June, Opera Mini users generated more than 168.4 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since May, the data consumed went up by 5.6%.

- The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage this month are (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, U.S., U.K., Poland, Nigeria.

- Nokia phones continue to be the handsets of preference for Opera Mini users, with Sony Ericsson claiming second place. BlackBerry and Samsung phones are the preference in the United States.

"More than 10 billion page views in one month underscore that the Web is already the platform of choice for mobile devices," says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. "Web standards provide a more efficient way to create flawless sites across all devices. This strategy, called 'One Web', is more important than ever before as more people will view more pages on all manner of mobile phones."

In other mobile news, Yahoo is syncing its new homepage with mobile, and has new iPhone design for its top properties. The company has also opened up its BluePrint platform to third-party developers for easy mobile site creation. AT&T has a new social networking app, and Google Voice was banned from Apple's App Store.