Google has revealed its plans for iPad support, announcing a number of tablet-optimized tweaks for its services.

For one, it’s releasing an experimental user interface for Gmail based on the HTML5 mobile web app developed for the iPhone and Android. It features a two-pane view with a conversation thread listing on the left and message pane on the right (screenshot below).

Several Google services will also ship pre-installed on the iPad as apps: The YouTube app supports HD viewing and commenting, and the Maps app utilizes high-resolution imagery from satellite and Street View, and includes a new terrain view.

Google is the default search engine in the Safari browser, and the Google Mobile App with voice search has been adapted for the iPad as well — this one’s not installed by default, but you can pick it up at theApp Store.

Notably, Google also chooses its words carefully in order to leave room for “other tablet computers” coming along soon after the iPad itself — many of which will run Android, as we wrote about back in January.

It will be interesting to watch whether or not Google will start to play favorites with its apps for iPad versus the coming onslaught of Android (and most likely eventually Chrome OS) tablets.

Google is testing a new feature within Google Maps: displaying specific hotel prices. The feature has been turned on for “a small portion of users.”

The new feature is very straightforward: whenever you search for hotels in a specific region, you will have the ability to check the prices of hotels that show up in search results, based on the date and the number of nights you are staying. The data is based on advertised prices from sponsored results — the prices are essentially ads, albeit useful ones.

Google made it clear that it is not changing its ranking system for hotels; instead, this is an experiment to test a new form of advertising that might be useful to the user. From the screenshot Google provided, the integration seems simple and useful to both Google Maps users and its millions of advertisers. It could roll out to more users soon if testing goes well.

What do you think; is this a feature that you would use? Let us know in the comments.