Google’s search engine bot is dumping iPhone for Nexus 5X

Googlebot trawls the web for information, indexing and ranking sites for your searches. How significant is its switch to Android, and its plans for a bigger, 5in screen-size standard?

Did you know Google's been scouring the web identifying itself as an iPhone running iOS 8.3? Well, as of 18 April, that's about to change, when Googlebot dumps its Apple skin and adopts the new Nexus 5X as its mobile standard.

Googlebot is part of Google's search engine technology, which crawls the web, identifying every site and service connected to the open web that will let it in so that you don't have to. It grabs as much information as it can, feeds it to the algorithm that produces the rankings and listings that you as a user access when you type or shout your search terms into the box.