Google revives open standard Calendar support: Your move, Microsoft - mullengazincomed79

Google's open standard for its Calendar service received a stay of execution Wednesday, as the search giant promised that developers monumental and small will be able to tap into Google Calendar for the foreseeable future using freely available protocols.

Regrettably, Windows users still won't be able to sync Expectation or their Windows Calendar app with Google Calendar unless Microsoft stairs up its game and hop on the CalDAV bandwagon.

It's good another battle in the ongoing war 'tween Google and Microsoft.

"From Microsoft's point of view, I Leslie Townes Hope they cerebrate about the oddment users," says St. Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. "The smaller end users, like consumers and little businesses that can't afford IT faculty and john't support Exchange, who rely on Google to support their business."

Nuts and bolts

Let's get the heavy-duty obligation talk out of the way first.

In March, Google announced plans to shutter the company's CalDAV API—the user interface used to tap into the near-omnipresent Google Calendar service. A fistful of "whitelisted developers"—including the Windows Earphone squad—would continue to live fit to use the open standard CalDAV API to access Google Calendar data, while everyone other would be forced to permutation to the proprietary Google Calendar API.

Apparently that didn't go finished so well with developers. Google so declared the axe isn't falling on CalDAV.

"Since that promulgation, we received many requests for access to CalDAV, giving us a better understanding of developers' use cases and causing us to revisit that decision," wrote tech leading Piotr Stanczyk on the Google Calendar blog. "In answer to those requests, we are keeping the CalDAV API public."

Google also announced plans to open its CardDAV API to all comers. CardDAV is an open classic wont to share contact information.

Indeed what?

Microsoft's controversial home brew YouTube app.

All this prate about backend Apis sure is boring, eh? My eyes are carrefour while I'm typing. Simply as the past some months shows us, this talk almost the nuts-and-bolts of data access is actually very, very important.

Closed, proprietary protocols can lead to headaches when their owners decide to shut pile access to the APIs, as made evident by the uproar sparked when Twitter decided to crack down on third-political party access to its service.

And newly, Microsoft and Google have been engaged in a communications protocol war that has all too ofttimes found users caught in the crossfire. The recent Windows Telephone slapfight over the similarly proprietary YouTube API springs immediately to mind, but other battles have been alarming to cut off Google service approach on Microsoft platforms for months now.

In December, Google announced that it was turning hit its Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) stick out for all free users as of January 30.

Since Windows Phone's support for Gmail and Google Calendar revolved around EAS, Microsoft was forced to scuffle to support CalDAV and CardDav in its mobile operating arrangement, which will be in place this summer.

Google agreed to maintain Google Sync, its EAS implementation, until July 31, making the call mere hours in front the January 30 deadline hit.

Meanwhile, Microsoft cut Google Calendar EAS access for its native Windows 8 Calendar app totally earlier this twelvemonth, free of charge and premium Google Apps users like. Mentality also doesn't any yearner support Google services natively.

"[Google's ongoing CalDAV support] is just another chess motion in the game here," says Moorhead. "Will Microsoft adopt CalDAV and CardDAV for Office and Lookout.com? It's your act."

When I asked if Google's stay of the CalDAV execution might prompt Microsoft to reintroduce Google Calendar support in Windows 8, Microsoft representatives said they had nothing to announce and pointed me toward this workaround help page most how to synchronise Google services in Windows RT—or non, in the shell of Google Calendar.

That's not good decent for Moorhead.

"The alternative for me, and for small businesses like mine, is to buy a Macintosh," he says. "Macs actually deliver pretty decent CalDAV and CardDAV support… I'm not going to change my mail service over to be able to use Microsoft's tools."

Salvation vocal

Information technology may be Microsoft's move, but don't flavour for it to make whatever wholesale CalDAV implementations any clock soon, outside of the previously scheduled Windows Earpiece affirm.

Fortunately, Google's decisiveness to keep its clear standard API just about isn't all about Goliath vs. Goliath. Ongoing CalDAV and CardDav support bequeath mean a good deal to smaller app developers who weren't on the Google whitelist previously.

It too tosses a bone to open-standard enthusiasts in a fla over Google's decision to dump support for the barefaced XMPP communications communications protocol in favor of a proprietary resolution for its new Hangouts service—a move announced the very same day that Google co-founding father Larry Page proudly proclaimed his company's ongoing investiture in open net standards.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/452275/google-revives-open-standard-calendar-support-your-move-microsoft.html

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