First off, Google for iPhone excels at speed and efficiency, and the app shows how much this matters in pulling a user in.

It Takes More Than Raw Network Speed

In my opinion the overall usability of the browsing experience makes all the difference in the world when it comes to mobile device adoption for online browsing. My prior experience with speed sans usability was not compelling.

Arguably, my Treo 700p, running at EV-DO speeds on Verizon’s network, should have offered a faster browsing experience than Apple’s iPhone on AT&T’s slow-paced EDGE network.

The “Whole Ecosystem” Has to be Optimized

But the reality is, the speed that the user actually experiences has a great deal to do with how the whole browsing environment has been optimized for the particular mobile device.

Optimization has to occur within the client-side device (in this case, the iPhone), the mobile-optimized browser (Apple’s Safari), the web pages (Google’s), and the web application architecture. If there’s a glitch anywhere in that ecosystem, the user’s experience will be compromised.

In the Treo+Verizon case, there is hardly any optimization at any point in the ecosystem. I eventually gave up trying to get real-time traffic updates for Seattle, because I’d be well past the traffic jam before my Treo had even displayed the local traffic site. (The local site, run by a state government agency, doesn’t attempt to optimize for WAP interfaces. Therefore the Treo is generally unable render the traffic web page in any useful form.)

In contrast the iPhone affords a totally different mobile browsing and searching experience, for traffic reports and weather — and now Google services. Many web sites work very well on the iPhone — without any extra effort on the part of the website owner.

I think Apple’s reliance upon an optimized version of Safari plus the Web 2.0 architecture — over time — will prove to be a winning strategy, as others in the mobile services ecosystem race to catch to the standard of excellence that Google and Apple have demonstrated with the iPhone. This will set a whole new level of user expectations.

As the Mobile Insider concludes:

Now obviously, an iPhone Web app works at an unfair advantage when compared to most handset interfaces. The touch screen, screen real estate, and simple mechanics of the Web 2.0 … interface make it easier to design speed and simplicity into this format than the more challenging handset.

…But the fact of the matter is that Google’s iPhone app reeled me in.

Google’s rationale for developing and promoting Android, their mobile OS platform, has to be largely motivated by the billions they hope to earn by enabling mobile advertising, the next big frontier in digital advertising.

Call me a luddite, but I, for one, am uninterested in receiving ads on my mobile phone under the current usage (and pricing) models offered to subscribers. Here’s why.

Why This Consumer Does Not Want Mobile Advertising on Her Phone

• Time is money: as long as I have to pay for the airtime used to receive a call or go online with my mobile device, I don’t want my limited airtime to be consumed by ads or content that I did not request. Same thing goes for SMS messages, especially on the phones where my husband and I pay individually for each text message we receive.
• “Interruption marketing” is very annoying: my cell phone does not live on my hip or in a pocket, so sometimes I have to run from one end of the house to another to take a call. It’s OK when the call is from someone I care about. It’s infuriating when I have to interrupt what I’m doing, run to another room — only to discover it’s telemarketing or an advertiser’s unwanted SMS message.
• Don’t make me wait: if I pick up the phone to make a call, I will not want to wait 15– to 30-seconds for an ad to finish before I’m can call the person or company I want to reach.
• Don’t stalk me: you cannot infer my intentions or interest from my physical location. Just because I’m walking down Seattle’s First Avenue toward Pike Place Market and have to walk by the Lusty Lady, does not mean I have any interest in pornographic content.
• Don’t send unsolicited LBS-enabled ads: I’m all for location-based services content when I initiate a search– for merchants, restaurants or other service providers in a particular locale — but do not send me unwanted offers just because I happen to be walking or driving by the advertiser’s neighborhood.

Potential Benefits of Mobile Advertising

Although I have limited personal interest, as a consumer, in mobile advertising, I can see some indirect benefits to it for the larger society:

• Ad-supported models enable service for lower income people: Mobile advertising could subsidize handsets and monthly airtime for those who can’t afford cell phones under the current pricing models. The real question is, how many advertisers actually want to deliver messages to low income people who can’t afford a mobile plan?
• Advertisers (and advertising revenues) will push the carriers to accelerate their deployment of networks capable of delivering video or music to the consumer’s handset. The improved bandwidth should make for better online browsing and searching experiences for the users.
• While consumers have little recourse when calls are dropped in mid conversation, advertisers will not want to pay the carrier (or mobile ad network) for ads that are interrupted by a network glitch. If enough money is at stake, network reliability should improve.