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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."
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!
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
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.-
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
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!
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.
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?
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)..