I moved off of Google Calendar and Google Reader (and have never used GMail) for exactly these reasons several months ago. I do not want to be dependent on free services or ones that might go away. I know this could be true for any company - but at least for ones I am paying for I have support agreements.
Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV
31–40 of 132 posts
Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV
#32Is there any stated reason for deprecating CalDAV support? I hope the new Calendar API is open enough for platforms like Blackberry, Ubuntu Mobile, Jolla and Firefox OS etc to tap into. It's increasingly looking like Google is making it hard for other platforms except it's own Android and iOS(can't ignore iOS because of the number of users) to interoperate with its services like Youtube, Gmail, Calendar etc.
Even if the Calendar API were open to all platforms, it's not a standard, it's just an API unilaterally defined by Google. CalDAV, however, is a standard " rel="nofollow">https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4791>. It is certainly an evil move from Google to try to replace an existing open standard with an API defined exclusively by them (unless they have technical grounds to do so, and considerate and documented extensions to the existing standard are not a viable approach).
Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV
#33I'm getting really nervous about relying so much on Google. I'll be working on transitioning off of them from here on out for all my projects and recommendations. I just learned about the Leaflet map library for example.
Wouldn't you just be reliant another another company? What's to guarantee that they won't close down the service one day?
Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV
#34I think Aaron Swartz hit the nail on the head with his "What Does Google Mean by “Evil”?" blog post[1]: > "They specifically name three: showing irrelevant ads, using pop-ups or other annoying gimmicks, and selling off actual search results. Hardly the stuff of comic books. But what do these three have in common? They’re all instances of refusing to make things worse for your users in order to make more money " This…
> "They specifically name three: showing irrelevant ads, using pop-ups or other annoying gimmicks, and selling off actual search results.
I think omitting a border around ads and intentionally reducing the contrast from the background to make it invisible to older people and people with bad monitors does count as an annoying gimmick and a user-hostile anti-pattern. The A/B testing would've shown a lot of ad clicks and increase in profit from people who mistake them for organic search results.
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentional...
And also, didn't Google change its shopping results to be paid search results?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/05/31/how-evi...
I would think the beancounters are rapidly taking over.
Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV
#35I think Aaron Swartz hit the nail on the head with his "What Does Google Mean by “Evil”?" blog post[1]: > "They specifically name three: showing irrelevant ads, using pop-ups or other annoying gimmicks, and selling off actual search results. Hardly the stuff of comic books. But what do these three have in common? They’re all instances of refusing to make things worse for your users in order to make more money " This…
So is Google forbidden from ever closing down a service without being accused of being evil?
More specifically, Google is forbidden to replace IETF-approved and wide-acknowledged API with its own proprietary substitute without being accused of being evil.
Seems to be fair enough for me, just in case anyone cares.
Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV
#36I think Aaron Swartz hit the nail on the head with his "What Does Google Mean by “Evil”?" blog post[1]: > "They specifically name three: showing irrelevant ads, using pop-ups or other annoying gimmicks, and selling off actual search results. Hardly the stuff of comic books. But what do these three have in common? They’re all instances of refusing to make things worse for your users in order to make more money " This…
So is Google forbidden from ever closing down a service without being accused of being evil?
Not really, but in this case, they have failed to give any justification for not following a standard that industry giants like Apple follow and which Microsoft is close to implementing on Windows Phone. Perhaps there is a technical reason, but Google not being open about it makes people assume the worst.
Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV
#37Seems like a proxy layer that speaks CalDAV on one end and Google Calendar API on the other might be handy. Any idea of how much the latter API has that would be difficult to translate?
Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're going down the Facebook route, they want to lock you into their AOL-style walled garden. I was surprised the other day when I went to share a video from Google+ to Facebook, turns out I couldn't, it wasn't a youtube video as I had expected.
Just like PG said in one of his essays, Google is now the new Microsoft. It used to be about giving hackers tools to build on top of their services. Now, its all about turning the search engine into a social network. And before the Google army comes in, let me say one thing. I used to love Google. Used all of their services. Built stuff with their services. Each computer I touched got Chrome installed. I was a fan bo…
As someone often accused of being a Google "fanboi"... I agree. I'm not going to abandon Go or Chrome or anything because they are fully OSS so if Google drops them it isn't the end of the world, but I wouldn't dream of building a service (even a free for-fun one) on top of some Google Web API these days.
Maybe that's fine with them (seems like they have a corporate mission to eliminate the whole idea of free or nearly-free web APIs anyway), but regardless of their motivations they've proven to be a non-reliable provider of stable free-to-use web APIs over the past couple of years.
Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV
#39The real problem for Google is that Microsoft has better products than Gmail and Google Calender. I am completely fine switching to Outlook web mail services and actually want to move after the way they are handling the active sync situation, the redesign and the closing of services. Once I switch, I would still log in for Google Reader but that ends in July. Google is king of search but the game its playing with the…
Sadly, Microsoft Outlook Web Access isn't an option — if you're looking for self hosted services, which you should, having seen what's happening now. The webmail interface is just ugly and hard to use when handling lots of emails each day (as most people here do, I presume).
As soon as I find something with a decent calendar system (web, CalDav, time zone support, decent interface and subscribing to iCalendar feeds) as well as decent email (useful interface, good filtering, acceptable spam filtering), and hopefully, XMPP support baked in, I'm jumping ship. This is starting to get ugly.
Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pure speculation, but I would assume Apple will be a "whitelisted developer".
Based on Google's previous app releases (YouTube, Gmail, Maps, ...) I wouldn't be surprised to see a native Google Calendar app instead.
It's funny because while I'm bound to my gmail account by my email address, I use google calendars only because of inertia. I would think that it's a huge benefit to google to know about all of my appointments. The day I can't use google's calendar with Mail.app, either on iOS or OSX, is the day I migrate my calendars to iCloud. Google cant be dumb enough to think that iOS users will use separate calendar apps for their exchange and gmail calendars, can they?
So what's next - no IMAP for gmail? And then force everyone to use a custom gmail app?