A query less ordinary

Posted by Roger Skubowius, Software Engineer

A lot of our work in the mobile space has been about delivering quick answers to everyday questions. Services like Google SMS, Personalized Home, and Local for mobile bring you movie times, phone numbers, the latest news headlines and directions from point A to point B.

But what about those problems that are a little less everyday? What if, say, you're out somewhere and absolutely must know if that new Super Monkey Ball game for the Nintendo DS is in stores yet?

If you search for [Super Monkey Ball DS release date] in an ordinary web browser on your PC, your first result is this complex, graphics-rich page. Search that same phrase on Google with your mobile phone, though, and your top result is this lightweight, phone-friendly version of the same page. That's because now whenever you click on a Google search result through your mobile web browser, Google automatically translates the page's layout to make it as easy as possible to read on a small screen. We also break long-winded web pages into smaller pieces and do our best to show you the portion that's relevant to your query, first.

The whole idea is to get you the information you want as quickly as possible, so you can spend less time downloading and scrolling through long documents on a pocket-sized screen, and more time (what else?) playing Super Monkey Ball.