David M. Williams wonders, over at ITWire, if iPhone-friendly sites are actually doing the iPhone a disservice. Sure, we could just cut to the chase and say iPhone optimized sites suck but where is the fun in that?

Mr. Miller’s article recounts an interesting experience where he tries to complete a transaction on ebay (using the mobile ebay version) and is unable to do so. The quick objection will be that there is a link to ebay calssic on the ebay mobile page and switching to classic ebay would’ve fixed the problem but the problem is larger than that.

When you’re using the iPhone you expect the full internet (well sans flash anyway). You don’t expect some mobile optimized site that might make navigation more convenient but seriously degrades the amount of information on the page. Those kinds of pages are better left to phones with craptastic browsers. Every time site a sends you to an iPhone specific webpage instead of there everyday site they are telling you that they know what you want more than you do. Which is presumptuous, when you bought the iPhone you bought it for the full internet. Not that there shouldn’t be an option to use a scaled down version of a site but the default behavior should be full site->iPhone optimized site if you want it. To reiterate: Yes, when you’re automatically redirected to an iPhone specific page iPhone optimized sites do suck.