Google confirmed that the service should work fine on the latest IE Mobile release

Jan 7, 2013 10:24 GMT  ·  By

Google’s Maps service will once again be accessible to Windows Phone users through the mobile browser on their devices, after they were blocked out of it recently.

Reports on the platform being restricted from accessing Google Maps via browser have emerged online a while ago, and many news sites reported on the matter last week.

At the time, Google said that the Internet Explorer browser that Microsoft packed Windows Phone with was the issue here, and that only WebKit browser could access the service.

However, it seems that the company itself was indeed the one to block users out of the mobile browser version of Google Maps, but that the issue will be resolved soon.

The company confirmed to The Next Web that, while previous IE Mobile versions did not offer the expected experience with Google Maps, the latest releases do, and that this will result in the service being available to Windows Phone users once again.

“We periodically test Google Maps compatibility with mobile browsers to make sure we deliver the best experience for those users,” the company said in a statement.

“In our last test, IE mobile still did not offer a good maps experience with no ability to pan or zoom and perform basic map functionality. As a result, we chose to continue to redirect IE mobile users to Google.com where they could at least make local searches.”

“Recent improvements to IE mobile and Google Maps now deliver a better experience and we are currently working to remove the redirect. We will continue to test Google Maps compatibility with other mobile browsers to ensure the best possible experience for users,” the company also said.

Apparently, many users are already able to access Google Maps through the Internet Explorer app on their Windows Phone 8 devices, which means that the service should become available to all of them soon.