There were a couple significant announcements for BlackBerry users today. First off, Google announced that its Google Mobile App for BlackBerry can now not only search for email and contacts on the device, but also search the cloud to find items in Gmail, Google Contacts, and Google Docs. 

Google announced today that it has updated its Google Mobile iPhone app to push notifications from users’ Google accounts to their phones. Now, an icon badge will show when you’ve got new mail in Gmail or when a reminder for a Google Calendar event comes up.

The badge will appear right on the home screen.

"We’ve also added spiffy features to get you information faster — when looking for flight info, weather, stock quotes or currency conversion you’ll see answers before you even hit ‘Search’," says Google engineering manager David Singleton.

Google announced that the new version of its Google Mobile app for the iPhone was approved and is now available in the App Store. The new version includes a redesigned search results display that shows more results at once. It also opens web pages from the results within the app.

Google has launched a long overdue mobile version of Book Search for the iPhone and Android. This includes access to over 1.5 million mobile public domain books.

Last year, Google was kind enough to tailor a specific version of its personalized homepage tool iGoogle, to the ever-popular iPhone. They even offered a video showing how nice and convenient it would be for iPhone users.

Google is now making it easier to find directions to businesses via Google Maps for Mobile. Now users can get directions by entering the name of the business in the start or end point fields. Google illustrates this with a Starbucks example on the Google Mobile Blog:

Google is calling for your ideas for new product features for Google Mobile. They recently set up a Product Ideas page built on Google Moderator that allows users to submit ideas and vote others up and down.

Google has been counting down the days of December heading into the New Year by offering tips for Google Mobile, just as they have been doing separately with Google products in general.

In an effort to spread some holiday cheer and perhaps some more Google Mobile use, Google is posting a number of holiday video tips for using the Google Mobile service. For instance, here are a couple of mildly amusing videos of Santa using Google Mobile to figure out how to give himself the Heimlich maneuver after he begins to choke, and finding a locksmith when he can’t gain entrance into someone’s home. For some reason, he’s delivering presents in the middle of the day.

Today’s the big day for the Google Phone. T-Mobile will announce the availability of the G1 today, the HTC-manufactured phone featuring Google’s Android mobile platform. The phone is expected to be the top competitor for Apple’s iPhone, and will supposedly cost $199 with a two-year contract.

Now that the Summer Games are over, political coverage will become inescapable.  Some people are bound to embrace it, though, and these folks should appreciate new offerings from Google Mobile and YouTube.

Cellphones can be far too complicated.  They fit in your palm and weigh two ounces, yet the instruction manuals resemble short novels.  So, with a sort of monkeys-can-do-it simplicity, a new site aims to show users the all-around wonderfulness of Google Mobile.

While Google already sells ads on cell phones the company wants to expand it search service to more mobile devices.

Last week, a high-ranking Google executive confirmed that the search engine company is developing a mobile phone.  Now another exec – one with even more influence – has denied the rumors.  “[B]ecoming an equipment manufacturer is pretty far from our business model,” said Vinton Cerf.

Google has just wrapped up a successful test for advertising via mobile phones in Japan, according to Bloomberg. The Japanese mobile phone market, more robust and advanced than the US market, is often used to test mobile technologies.