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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."

21 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. Doesn't add up to anything by moofdaddy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A google calendar would be nice but I don't know if this guys predictions amounts to anything more then just hearsay. I run a couple of websites and the stat bump that he is basing a lot of his predictions on is probably just because he got a bump in his overall pagerank or perhapse google did a deeper index. The way they work when they index you is they do a initial surface sweep and then come back a few weeks later and hit you for a lot more.

    --
    Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
    1. Re:Doesn't add up to anything by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Googlebot has been hammering the calendar section of a site I run

      Perhaps because that part of the site changes frequently?

    2. Re:Doesn't add up to anything by Imidazole · · Score: 0, Interesting

      Google, and MSN's bots have been hammering my iCal thats online for a /year/ now. Why? Because it's a crazy spidery mess of links and URLS, that it is trying to index - when really, they are dynamically generated content. Jesus... And these bots just dont give up! Think about it... Its spidering todays content, tomorrow, next day... and so on, until our nice little PHPiCal script says "We dont look that far ahead in time" - but guess what? It keeps going on /forever/ This is no proof Google is going to have a calendar feature. Who came up with this dumb idea?

  2. Too much Google? by ph34r_Hk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It seems like Google is trying to control every aspect of the internet/computer... Does anyone think that they are trying to do too much?

    1. Re:Too much Google? by SpookyFish · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Hm, no, not really. They already have gmail, and calendering is already tied into mail all over the place.

      Calendar doesn't surprise me a bit, nor will a follow-up that blends them tightly with an offering for (also common) small-business internal messaging packages.

      Google's whole thing has been to take supposedly "tired" technologies and, oh god, "embrace and extend" them. So long as they keep doing it better (and without Microsoft's evilness), that's ok.

    2. Re:Too much Google? by slashrogue · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm still waiting for a google homepage where I can log in and check my gmail, post to my blogspot blog, check my orkut account, etc. all with one login and hopefully a nice UI like we've come to expect from google. All this other stuff is nice but I want it all in one place.

  3. Wouldn't it be great if... by elid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...they could integrate it with gmail?

  4. A Reflection by thesupermikey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When Yahoo and Excite tried to do this years ago everyone made fun of them. Now it seems that if google does it - its cool - Google can do no wrong. I love Gmail and good...dont get me wrong.

    The good thing is that as good as added tons of new stuff over years the front page has not been jammed full of adds and paid links.

    --
    Mikey
    I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
  5. Hopeful, but pessimistic... by cvdwl · · Score: 2, Interesting
    WHOIS doesn't show gcal.com or gcalendar.com registered to Google, yet. And at least one is owned by a fairly legitimate business. The other is oddly FUBARed.

    And yeah, I'd love it if all meshed seamlessly into SunBird, Gmail, and iCal.

    --
    ... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
  6. I buy it. by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm sure search can be applied to calendar entries.

    "Going to Movies" - Pimp some movies.
    "Tax due" - Pimp some tax services.
    "Pay off credit card" - Pimp a credit card
    "Johns Birthday" - Pimp some gift ideas

    Just like gmail and adsense, calendar advertising could be used to help supply adverts targeted to something that someone is specifically interested in. Calendars might even be better than email as they will probably be more focused and less noisy than email conversations.

    --
    Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
  7. fucking blogs... by RaZ0r · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Come on, just because one guy noticed some GoogleBot activity on his site doesn't tell us squat about Google's future plans.

    This is getting almost as bad as Mac Rumors!

    Why is it that we never hear about rumors that prove to be false?

    (back to my hole I call a server-room)

    --


    - Think for yourself, question authority.-
  8. Google community - Mac Community by kevin_conaway · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Anyone notice how people follow Google now like die-hard mac heads follow Apple?

    If there is even the slightest whiff of a new feature, the Internet explodes with every forum discussing the possibilities of "what could be."

    I don't have a point, I just found it interesting :)

    1. Re:Google community - Mac Community by Cedric+C.+Girouard · · Score: 3, Interesting
      If there is even the slightest whiff of a new feature, the Internet explodes with every forum discussing the possibilities of "what could be."

      I'm pretty sure there's a couple of guys over at Google that also routinely read the forums and then come up with "Hey... They're on to something here, how can we implement this...".

      What if most new Google features are not innovation but a reaction to those "rumors" ?

      --

      Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...

  9. Re:Interesting, but... why? by illuin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You make a good point, but don't forget that Google has Orkut, too. If there was a way to leverage your social network to determine which calendars are actually relevant to you -- well, that could be pretty sweet!

  10. Uh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Not a good idea. The web brower is shit for editing things like a calendar. iCal on OS X can whip any web implementation's ass. What needs to be done is CAP, which would allow you to home the calendar on the server, and not the client. That way, you can subscribe on many machines (or web) *and* make changes.

  11. What about the weather? by V4Victory · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would love to see Google go after the weather market. Weather Channel's site is terrible and hasn't changed 5 years.
    It won't even automatically bring up the weather for your area in less than 1 click. Google seems to be well positioned to corner this market as well.

    1. Re:What about the weather? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      this is exactly why i like yahoo. it has all the stuff built in. yahoo locals rules and so do other services they provide. yahoo search is also very good, i think it easily compares to yahoo. i seriously don't see much difference between yahoo and google search.
      half of the time yahoo search returns better results than google and i'm happy with it.

  12. I've noticed similar by biftek · · Score: 3, Interesting

    About a week ago I put up a new link to a random timetabling iCal outputting python script.

    I was quite surprised at how quickly googlebot started looking at it - a lot more than other pages, and without many links at all. Whether it's related to a hypothetical gCalendar I don't know - perhaps they just know that calendars might update regularly?

  13. Re:I don't buy it by ozmanjusri · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There really ins't much else you can do with the calendar.

    There may not be much more that you can do with a calendar, but there are plenty of us out here who'd like a lot more. A calendar which indexed all events in an area and made them available for searches like

    "On Wednesday night I want a Korean barbecue meal at starting at 7:30, followed by [name of movie], then live funk music until 1am, then tapas bar for an hour or two, then karaoke till dawn and catch a train home when everyone else is going to work"

    ...and which would then find the events I wanted, put them into my schedule and give me an optimized map showing how to get to each location, would suit my lifestyle right down to the ground.

    --
    "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  14. Here's what Google will do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I post this anonymously, even though I'm under no NDA with anyone, however I'm close to some sources, and here's what will happen:

    Google will build in an additional level of links, with added intelligence, on top of normal web pages. Say you're browsing a conference web site, an the programme says: "11:00-12:00: Mr X - An analysis of Karma Whoring". The google toolbar will figure out the correct date, time and subject, and allow you to click on this "virtual" link and have it added to your calendar - even (and this is the kicker) if the web site wasn't designed for this - google will figure it out. As far a I understand this idea has been patented and the patent was bought by google.

    Feel free to shoot me down as an anonymous liar karma whore, but we'll see who's right!
    (yes I know ACs don't get karma)..

  15. I use the Weather Channel every day by tomzyk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... in my web browser using Forecast Fox.

    And I wouldn't exactly say that weather.com is "useless". I can visit the site and it tells me what the forecast for taday, tonight, and tomorrow is. For me, that is typically enough. (And a weekend or 10-day forecast is one-click away too.)

    Of course, if I am feeling frisky and want to look at nifty Java apps for radar data, I'll visit IntelliCast or some other site.

    Again, for me, seeing the weather for today and tomorrow in my status bar is all the functionality I typically require.

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    Karma: NaN