Google discontinues public calendar search
The other day I received an email from our College of Education, telling everyone about an upcoming meeting. I don’t know if it was just the time of day or my frustration with getting so many emails, but I thought it was time I took action. I emailed the sender back, along with everyone else, asking if she could please set up a public Google calendar for the College, with the events posted. That way, anyone in the College could add the College of Education Events calendar to their own Google calendar, with the events/meetings listed. The College could still send invitations if they wanted, but through the Google calendar interface, thus allowing the recipient to automatically respond if they would be attending and of course add that event to their own calendar. Seems simple enough.
Apparently the College is working on setting up a Google calendar, but has not yet done that. So, of course I open my big mouth and now I’ll be helping them set it up. But, hey, no worries because it will take me all of a few minutes to show them what they need to do. Okay, maybe 20 minutes. But here is what I wanted to write about in this post:
Searching for Google public calendars is no longer an option in Google.I kept thinking that I was missing something when I tried to do a search for public calendars, but after doing a bit of research, I found out that Google has discontinued this service. And probably for a good reason, since Google really doesn’t need to spend the time or money indexing everyone’s public calendars that they always delete or rename. Yikes! That has to be a real nightmare . . . even for Google.
So, I need to tell the College that once they get their calendar set up and make it public, they need to provide the public URL to all of the faculty and staff, since we can’t find it doing a search. However, I also think that if they post a link or insert a calendar gadget on a webpage that the public URL will be available.
I love Google calendar, how easy it is to set up, how I have it synced with my iPhone, and how easy it is to view multiple calendars. I know that once our College of Education adopts Google calendar, they too will appreciate its usefulness.
Barbara Schroeder
I seem this was not very clever of Google because “Search public calendar” feature was one of the features people liked most of all. Personally I miss this option very much.
Helen
bummer on the public calendar search being gone. I was looking for it today, and I had the same reaction. “Huh, i thought it was here.” I can see why Google took that away. My feeling is that they realized that their directory was a broken method of getting the word out on public calendars. So they are going the decentralized route and encouraging people to tell others about public Google Calendars.
While I’m sad to see the centralized directory gone, I also admit it wasn’t really working. I’m glad Google recognized this too, and hopefully people will start using public calendars more.
funny that I was looking for a boise state public calendar and this blog came up under the google search of “public calendars google” Glad to see BSU’s not so small on the enternet. Let us know when you get that calendar up, and please give the other colleges and especially the registrar a nudge to do the same.
Also it’s too bad that bronco web can’t automate a google calendar of your class schedule, it’d make my life easier.