Google Calendar is nothing that hasn’t already existed for months. They haven’t added anything new to the online calendar market. Companies such as 30boxes, HipCal, Kiko, and Spongecell have been offering all of the features that Gcal has for several months now, and in many cases even significant features that Google Calendar is missing. It’s important to point out that the “Heavy Gmail integration” is not in fact even working yet, they haven’t bothered to flick that switch apparently.

Overall I am quite disappointed in the lack of any type of innovation on Google’s part. They didn’t even bother to borrow some of the best features of existing web calendars, they are just another one of the masses of options out there that is not very different than the competition.

The only reason people are excited about this is because it’s Google. Is it a good product? Sort of, it’s a half-baked product like everything else Google has been releasing lately.

The Key features:

• Text recognition – In adding an event, or detecting a new event from Gmail, Calendar automatically detects event-specific words and suggests the adding of a new event with data auto-structured.
• Manage Multiple Calendars – set up multiple calendars (work, personal, etc) and view them separately or together.
• Heavy Gmail integration – Gmail recognizes when messages include event information, so when you get emailed about an event, you can add it to Google Calendar with just a couple clicks. Google Calendar links on the right side of the Gmail page.
• Sharing – Calendars can be shared with others, and you can subscribe to others’ shared calendars. Read/write permissions can be granted on a per user basis. Calendars can be published via a web page or via RSS, so readers do not need to be on the Google Calendar platform.
• Importing – You can import events from other calendar programs, including Yahoo Calendar and Microsoft Outlook. Click “Settings,” then “Import Calendar”.
• Calendar Search