Google Tests Mobile Homepage with Places Buttons

Google has been pretty bullish on its local and location services and one big aspect of that is Google Places and all of the services around it. Places is becoming a huge directory of every place of interest on Earth and Google has been integrating the service and the data into some of its other services, like Maps and the search results. Now though, it looks like the company is making the biggest step yet, it has started testing Places integration on the Google homepage for mobile devices.

Several users are reporting seeing a brand new homepage with Places buttons.

The buttons provide quick links to Restaurants, Coffee, Bars as well as a drop-down menu with more categories. There's nothing new here, all of the data is already accessible via Google Maps, Place pages and sometimes via search results as well.

But it is a pretty big step for Google on several accounts. On the one hand, it signals that Places has grown up, it's now an integral part of the Google search experience, at least on the mobile front.

This makes sense, since a large percentage of mobile searches have to do with local information and location, according to Google itself.

On the other hand, it's also a big change for the Google homepage. The company has prided itself in maintaining a clean homepage, even as it added tens of new services to as arsenal.

Even on the mobile front, Google only has a few links to its most popular services and that's it, the page is dedicated to the search box and little else.

Google is likely still experimenting with the feature, but it seems to be a pretty widespread test indicating that it may roll out the new homepage sooner rather than later.

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