Posted by Asif Zahir, Product Team

We launched Google News for mobile devices last year to bring you access to the news you want, whenever you want. You can search for and browse through your favorite news headlines, all optimized for viewing on a mobile phone. You can even customize the homepage to add news sections that you care about.

What I like to keep in mind, though, is not just how convenient Google News for mobile can be, but how essential. One of our engineers was recently traveling through Africa when he ran into a loyal Google News user. When the Googler asked the local if he knew that Google News was available on mobile, the local guy replied with a puzzled look: "Of course -- how else would you get to it?" Well put, since nearly 9% of the world accesses the Internet via a mobile device.

Since then, we've launched Google News for mobile in 20 countries and are working to make it available in many more - so stay tuned if your country isn't yet covered. If you're living in Brazil, Sweden and Norway, I hope you're enjoying any of these three most recently launched versions! And if you happen to be reading this and you're a publisher of mobile news content we haven't yet discovered, we'd love to hear from you.