Google Calendar Coming Soon?

mcpastore writes "Blogs have recently been buzzing over the possibility of seeing a Google Calendar popping up soon. Dave bases his prediction on the fact that one of his sites has been getting a tremendous amount of hits from GoogleBot ever since he added the iCal calendar. It makes perfect sense Google would try to go after the calendar market as it is their last big missing piece of the portal puzzle."

Comments

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[fembots]

So when your, or someone else's birthday's coming, you might see more gift-related ads?

I don't buy it

[moofdaddy]

A calendar seems pretty clearly not to be in google's long term strategy. Everything they do they do because they can using their searching technology to make the way things are done even better. Be it email with searches, almost all the projects in google labs, etc. Search functions don't really fit all that well into a calendar, at least nothing that is goign to be improved by their algorithms.

Second the whole calendar thing has been kind of done to death already. Outlook does a pretty decent job on the PC and iCal does an amazing job on the mac. When Google moved into email they did so because the current web based emails sucked, there was major room for imporvement. There really ins't much else you can do with the calendar.

In the end it really just doesn't make sense.

Re:I don't buy it

[Statecraftsman]

I disagree with the idea that there's not much more to be done with calendars. If they could just port over that scrolling effect of maps to multiple calendar day views I'd use it...they can even keep it beta forever, I don't mind.

One of the main benefits of their apps is that they are accessible from anywhere...only a modest improvement is needed to make people switch and they are clearly trying to innovate.

Could be useful

[teslatug]

It'd be nice if they really integrated it into gmail. Yahoo already has such a feature, and it's not horrible, but I'm sure gCal could be much better.

I'd pay for this

[Azureflare]

I use gmail via the webclient all the time now, and I really want a calendar to be integrated with it so I can access all my important times/dates/todos in one place anywhere I am, not just at home. My Corp has outlook webmail but I HATE HATE HATE the user interface. Gmail has probably the best interface I've ever used, and if they added a calendar to that...

I'd be willing to pay money for that.

Probably not a calendar

[ballwall]

My guess is they want to search events. It would be cool to google "concerts in denver" at calendar.google.com and get something meaningful back. It's all about searching, and storing your events in google doesn't really accomplish anything.

Makes much more sense for them to add the time element to searches, not a calendar function similar to Outlook or Lotus Notes.

Re:Too much Google?

[idlemachine]

It seems like Google is trying to control every aspect of the internet/computer.

By providing people with free tools that they can choose not to use if they don't want them?

That doesn't really fit with any definition of "control" that I'm familiar with.

Calendar is the last slot in an enterprise package

[zipwow]

I've been saying this for weeks now. Actually, ever since the first time I said, "Wow, I love g-mail, I wish I could use it for work."

If Google has calendaring and mail, with interfaces that are both simple and intuitive (obviously a strength of Google) then they can bundle that with their Enterprise search functionality and have a heck of a package.

They can sell it service-based like Microsoft dreams about, or they can ship it out on the little yellow boxes. Users are freed from installation hassles, and in the subscription package, IT departments from management hassles.

It seems like the next logical step to me.

-Zipwow