What Else Google Is Shutting Down

While the demise of Google Reader got all the attention, there are some other things going away in A second spring of cleaning. It’s worth reading.

One of the interesting ones: the CalDAV API will be removed for all but whitelisted developers. CalDAV builds on WebDAV and is an open standard. Instead you’d have to use the Google Calendar API.

I wouldn’t have noticed this except that I was out with two calendar developers last night: John Chaffee of BusyCal and Michael Simmons of Flexibits. I suspect they’ve got some coding to do.

Google certainly has the right to shut things down — and I think they’re right to do so, also. The company’s been all over the place and should continue to work on focus.

But I don’t like when they turn off existing support for an open standard like CalDAV in favor of a Google-only API. Sure, they can — it’s within their rights, obviously. But I don’t like it.