Well, Google's at it again:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/14/3...l-calendar-and

For those of you who use GMail and / or Google calendar on any platform other than Android (where a proprietary sync solution is used), this is very bad news.

For iOS users:

- you can no longer use Mail.app if you want to have push. In that case, you'll have to use Google's native GMail app. The caveat being that iOS is unable to use the GMail app to send e-mails directly from within other apps (to, say, share an article on Reeder, for example). If you use the native GMail app, you'll also have to set up an additional IMAP Google account on your phone so you'll still be able to use share via e-mail.

- You'll have to use CalDAV to sync your calendars. Again: no push. Google doesn't have a native calendar app for iOS, so push functionality for calendars is lost permanently. Plus, this means you need yet another account on your iPhone. That's three in total: one for your GMail app, one for IMAP and one for CalDAV. If you change your Google password, you'll have to change it three times on your mobile phone.


For Windows Phone 7 or 8 users:

Well, unless Microsoft comes up with another solution by the end of January, you're screwed. WP8 doesn't support CalDAV and you'll be e-mail only henceforward. And you'll also lose push support as WP8 doesn't support push over IMAP (which doesn't work very reliably anyway and drains the battery far more quickly than EAS).

So what are the choices other than giving up on the convenience push offers (and on calendars, if you're on WP)?

1. Give Google your money. For paid Google Apps accounts, Google will continue to offer EAS. However, that also means you can kiss your @gmail.com address goodbye as you'll need to provide your own domain for Google Apps for businesses. Also, Google Apps isn't easy to set up and maintain for non-techies.

2. Give up on Google and switch to Outlook.com (which will continue to offer EAS support for all platforms). You could also switch to an icloud.com account but then you'll also lose push on any platform other than iOS (or, if you're in Germany, also for iOS as Apple had to disable push in Germany due to patent issues).

3. buy an Android device (which is, of course, what Google wants you to do at this point)


Existing setups will continue to work beyond January 31 but eventually you'll need to reset your phone and then it's over.

All in all, this is a very bad move for a huge number of users - I've been on Google Apps for years so this doesn't affect me. But I'm seriously wondering what's next and whether it's smart to remain with Google as my provider for e-mail and calendars.

It's also clear that Google's aim is to keep Windows Phone 8 from cannibalizing Android's market share. Google also announced that they wouldn't release any Google applications (such as a native GMail account) for Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8. I'm sure they'd also dump support for iOS if they could, but that would upset too many people. So essentially, Google is now actively using its de-facto monopoly to kill the competition. So much for Google's "do no evil" policy. They've shown that they're the same kind of a** h***s as Apple.

So they are simply protecting their own business whats the issue.

wp8 has in the order of 1% market share. it makes no economic sense to develop for this market. google support ios and android because they are the 2 main smartphone systems with something like 90% market share. in my view it is simple business sense and not some grand conspiracy...

this argument doesn't hold water. they don't have a monopoly in email, or calendar. (nor in search when it comes down to it). i'm not sure how you see cutting back features in calendar products as an abuse of their monopoly position in search.

and btw, the email and search products were new entrants in a highly competitive market - their search 'monopoly' is also under massive threat from mobile. to be honest. i would argue that they have no monopoly in search. there are many competing search engines and people can easily choose which one to use.

anyway, all they are doing on the sync front is moving away from the proprietary microsoft active sync and instead using open standards: caldav, carddav and imap.

This is a good idea anyway as the Android is a great phone system

So, straying slightly off topic - what's the best way of using a shared calendar for two people, one of whom is on a Gmail/Android platform and the other OSX/iOS based?

the issue is that they have a de-facto monopoly on their search engine.

Only because the rest of them are so incompetent that noone has developed anything remotely like a search engine that works

I can understand that they don't want to develop for WP8 and I can live with that. This goes way beyond WP8, however, as it breaks and / or complicates things for iOS as well.

But what they're doing now is very similar to what Apple did with their sucky maps service: they took away a previously working solution to promote their own sucky version. They're just showing that marketing is more important than the customers' needs. I guess they learned that from Apple. I'm just surprised as this is somewhat new for Google - up until now they've always distanced themselves from such practices ("do no evil").

I don't care why they have a monopoly. What matters is that they do and that they've now resorted to actively taking advantage of it to kill competition - and that's illegal.

I agree, but less choice is always bad.

Since when have they tried to kill off other search engines through business aggressive business practices. Unlike Microsoft they did not bundle competing products together forcing customers buyng one product to buy another.

In the search engine space they have simply developed the best solution and noone has taken them on or even developed anything good enough. They dont force you to use the google search engine and people are able to use yahoo and others if they want (except they are useless) They have a monopoly by default of others not interested in building anything any good. Now if you look at their online docs, email and other services they are building then yes they are behaving more this way.

However in the search engine area they simple outmanouvered the others and made the best solution.

The search engine is the basis for Google's entire ecosystem.

seriously people. Google provides a free service, and have now decided to discontinue support for a rival's proprietary service, while maintaining free support for industry-standard protocols.

their Chrome browser, which I think is the best desktop browser out there, lets you set up Yahoo or Bing or whatever as the default search engine (and very visible in the settings menu, not hidden 3 levels deep).

what will you expect next? free coffee every time you use gmail???

That still doesnt prove they used aggressive behaviours to beat the others they simply had superior approach and intelligence. At the time they were building and growing yahoo had plenty of opportunity and failed. So what if th search engine is the heart of their business go and read about how the company grew they actually figured out how to ensure reliability, designed the solutions to be the best at searching and as a result everybody moved to them.

Compared to microsoft they built operating systems, browsers and otje products into the same package and wouldnt not let you separate them. That is monopolistic and europe forced them to change.

Google however dont sell the search engine to customers you can choose. A different one whenever you want however they have worked out how to get theirs to be the best. Admitted their are some areas where they do allow priority to those who pay more to be discoverd faster in. The search process. But the end customer has total choice in which search engine they want to use as their is no purchase or conteact.

Hardly the behaviour of a monopoly, at least in this aspect of the business and it doesnt matter if this is the heart of how they pperate, just some smart cookies that outsmarted th others whi thought they were good.

It doesn't have to be free - they could as well have charge GMail users money for it. But that's not the plan now, is it?

You simply dont get the point, the feedback is telling you that the heart of google's business is rhe search engine and you are free to choose the one you want yet you want to bring up something about their intention on how and what email system is provided.

I dont get what your real point is as you seem to be serching for the real answer.

Recommend you open up google in the browser and search for the answer

Hi,

I find gmail the weakest of the available free email services. However, I am more interested what this means for business users who rely on syncing email, calendars and contacts to their phones. With IOS Apple license ActiveSync so I do not see it have a big effect. With Android if ActiveSync support was removed from the OS then it would have to be built natively into each of PIM apps that required it.

It is ironic that what really got the iphone popular was when it started supporting Active Sync...as they you could get your work emails on your phone.

Have fun

Martin

Should I rejoice in the spirit of Christmas that a service I've been using for years and which is essential for my platform of choice is discontinued without an alternative?

that is EXACTLY the plan.
you can have Activesync if you pay for a Google Apps account.

and at 50 bucks per annum, they aren't exactly ripping you off.

I've been using google apps for years for two of my domains. The problem here is that google apps for businesses is hardly suitable for the general user. You need your own domain, you need to set up users, manage the google services settings by yourself. That's definitely not an alternative for most people.