Google adds new features to its iPhone home page

Boston: Google upgraded its home page for Apple's iPhone, adding features to e-mail and calendar programs and allowing users to customise the site with the applications.

Gmail users will see new messages automatically without having to refresh their in-boxes, the Mountain View, California- based company said. The calendar software now shows a full month of appointments.

Google is counting on services for the iPhone and other mobile devices to lure more advertisers. Today's changes follow the addition of e-mail and calendar buttons to the iPhone site six weeks ago. That let users access the programs from a single page.

Apple sold at least two million iPhones over the holidays, according to estimates from analysts at Bear Stearns & Co, Piper Jaffray & Co and Sanford C Bernstein & Co The device combines a music player, Web browser and wireless handset.

In addition to getting the new Google home page features, iPhone users can now access customised iGoogle pages created for their computers. The iGoogle site allows customers to view weather, news and stock prices.

Google is competing with Yahoo! and Microsoft, which are also creating more mobile applications. Yahoo introduced a new home page last week that lets users get customized information such as news and sports on their phones.

Google rose $15.57 to $653.82 at 4pm New York time Thursday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock has fallen 5.4 per cent this year after surging 50 per cent in 2007.