The Google Mobile Blog offers details. "Now, advertisers will be able to display ads exclusively on these mobile devices, create campaigns for them, and get separate performance reporting. If you prefer not to show your desktop ads on these phones, you can opt out and show ads only on desktop and laptop computers."

Google says that unlike standard mobile ads you don’t need to format your ads for mobile phones to show your ads on the G1 and iPhone. Because the G1 and iPhone has full Internet browsers, you will be able to display your standard AdWords ads and landing pages on these devices without having to modify them.

Here is how to get started. "To target ads for G1 and iPhone, go to your campaign settings tab in your AdWords account. Then for the "Device Platform" option under ‘Networks and Bidding,’ select ‘iPhones and other mobile devices with full internet browsers.’"

"As additional devices that use full browsers enter the market, your ads will show on those phones, too. You can visit the AdWords Help Center for more detailed instructions and watch my video below for a quick demo. If you currently have an AdWords campaign running, by default your campaign will show ads on desktop and laptop computers, as well as iPhone and G1."

You can pan around and zoom in and out easily using just your thumb on the touchscreen — a big plus for all those times when that other hand is unavailable. And if I want to see a restaurant or building up close, I can switch to Street View and view a panorama from street level. I can even turn on Compass mode to let me look around the panorama by moving my phone up, down, and to the side. It’s like popping up a virtual periscope anywhere you want to check out what’s there with your own eyes. Check out the video below for a quick demo. Note that Street View on Android is only available in the US at this time.

When I’m in a new city or just a new part of town, I like to turn on My Location. It can use GPS or just the nearest cell tower to tell me where I am and re-center my position in the middle of my screen when I approach the edge. When I’m walking or in a taxi in a dense city, like New York, I zoom in to street level and turn on GPS for the highest accuracy.

With the G1, you can also save search results to contacts, so when you find a business using Google Maps, you can conveniently store the map. This should be a convenient feature for people who travel a lot, particularly to the same cities repeatedly. If you find a great Chinese restaurant in LA once, you can easily find it again via your contacts.

Developers are free to use Android’s MapView and location APIs to build "location-aware" mobile applications, so I would expect to see a lot of cool things happening out of that. Conway cites Cab4me and Locale, which were winners in the Android Developer Challenge.

These apps and Google Maps for Android are bound to be exceptionally cool once the GeoEye imagery is implemented throughout (the first image was released today). Anyone used Google Maps on Android much yet? If so, what are your thoughts?

We’ve integrated Search with applications in a variety of ways, in order to make it universally accessible. Every searchable application includes a Search menu option. Some applications (like Maps) support type-to-search. Just start typing, and Maps will automatically open the Search UI for you! Some applications (like Android Market) have Search buttons, while others have Search widgets (like the home screen). Finally, on the T-Mobile G1, there’s even a dedicated Search key on bottom row of the keyboard. Just press it and start typing your query.

They’ve incorporated Google Suggest into Android, which is probably even more of a useful feature on a mobile device than it is on a PC. This way, if a suggestion comes up that the user likes, they can simply touch it and go to the results page. Searches in Gmail and YouTube also have suggestion features based on your past queries serving basically the same purpose.

Google has made the search API available to third-party developers so they can integrate search functionality into their applications. "What’s more exciting to me is that developers can improve upon search as well," says Stadler. "Maybe someone will find and provide new sources of searchable knowledge, or serve ‘mind reading’ suggestions, or display search results in a more informative and beautiful way?"

The Google Mobile Blog will be posting looks at each of the other G1 applications over the next couple weeks, so we should also be getting closer looks at Maps, Gmail, Calendar, Google Talk, and YouTube features as well. How do those of you who have the phone like the usability of its apps?

According to T-Mobile, the phone will be available in the US on October 22 for a price of $179 with a two-year contract. It will then be available in the UK in November, and across Europe in the first quarter of 2009, T-Mobile says.

There’s an introductory promotional video tour available, and several other videos at YouTube show off some of the features of the G1. Walt Mossberg reviews this iPhone competitor with further details. Walt writes, “Most importantly, the G1 complements its touch screen with a physical keyboard, the lack of which has made the iPhone a non-starter for some users. The G1’s keyboard is revealed when you slide open its screen. The keys are a bit flat, and you have to reach your right thumb around a bulging portion of the phone’s body to type, but it’s a real keyboard. (…) A second big feature, or limitation, of the G1 – depending on your point of view – is that it is tightly tied to Google’s web-based email, contacts and calendar programs. In fact, you must have a Google … account to use the phone, and can only synchronize the phone’s calendar and address book with Google online services. Unlike the iPhone, it doesn’t work with Microsoft Exchange, and it can’t physically be synced with a PC-based calendar or contacts program, like Microsoft Outlook.”

[Photos by T-Mobile. Hat tip to Search Engine Land, Google OS, Abhisshek, Dpic and everyone who provided comments!]

Comments

While we still await the official announcement, the Boy Genius Report has scored some screenshots of the phone, providing a good look into the phone itself as well as the operating system. "The desktop shot looks roughly similar to the Android desktop shots that we’ve seen from the beginning, with a collection of customizable widgets that display a variety of at-a-glance info and access to commonly used applications," writes Joshua Karp at the site. "The presence of a MyFaves icon ensures compatibility with T-Mobile’s unlimited calling service."

The real question is just how competitive the market is going to get as a result of Google being involved. "While search won’t necessarily play the identical role in mobile it does online, it will still be a prominent part of the mobile Internet experience," says Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land. "You can bet Google is banking on that." Sterling also has an in depth look at said market, taking into account data from Nielsen as well as Android Co-founder Andy Rubin’s recent "future of mobile" post on the Google Blog.

Either way, the G1 should be a strong weapon for T-Mobile, provided it doesn’t face any iPhone 3G-like issues. Hopefully they can at least avoid the false advertising controversy. For all the G1 info you want, the T-Mobile press conference starts at 10:30 AM (with an on-demand version being made available just after).