If you hear people saying that Google closed CalDAV (an open standard for calendar info), please point them to the blog post at http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2013/06/making-googles-... to let them know CalDAV is remaining open and that Google is opening up CardDAV access (used for contact info) to everyone too. I'm glad that Google is doing this.

  | Google is opening up CardDAV 

CardDAV was accessible, but it was not documented. Some Googling could get you some archived mailing list threads where people posted the 'secret' URLs[1]. Even then, I couldn't get responses to all of the requests defined in the RFC. I remember getting a listing of supported request types from the server, but not all of them worked. Also "All Contacts" was not accessible. "My Contacts" was the only address book accessible to CardDAV.

For reference, I've put the stuff I was playing around with on Github: https://github.com/bsandrow/scratchpad-google-carddav

[1] I say secret because those mailing list posts were the only references I could find to them, so I don't know how they were obtained.

That's a great decision on their part. However I really hope they reconsider the removal of ActiveSync support aka Google Sync. Totally anecdotal, but my wife is not a fan of the official Gmail iOS client which is their current solution for push email, and IMAP works OK with the stock Mail app for her except for the lack of push. I'd be OK with paying for Google Apps account to get ActiveSync back, except that you can't do that with a Gmail address.

I thought the reason for the activesync/exchange shutoff is that it had to be licensed. aka that google paid microsoft for being able to use it? If so maybe it isn't worth it due to a licensing increase or just not used by many people (for some value, google is crazy about numbers guiding decisions).

Gmail's IMAP supports the IMAP push extensions. I don't know if Apple's Mail app supports them or uses them, but just because it's IMAP doesn't mean it isn't push.

Thanks, I didn't even know there was such as thing as P-IMAP. So I guess it's up to Apple to add support for this to the Mail app huh?

OS X's mail client supports IMAP push as well.

I think the iPhone does support it.

This is so awesome to see. I really want to thank the people involved in this decision, do you know who those might be Matt?

There were a bunch of people, including regular Googlers from around the company who asked about this.

Personally, I'm most grateful to the core group on the team that listened to both external and internal feedback and then went back to see how they could make things better. I understand and respect if those folks want their privacy, but I thought it was really great to see them not only change their mind, but ask about how to push more on openness in this area. At this point, Google supports open standards for calendar, contacts, and email. It's great to see CardDAV open up to everyone.

Matt, do you have any insight into whether or not there's even any internal discussion within Google about revisiting the XMPP issue regarding Hangouts, and/or publish a spec for their new protocol?

Of course I totally understand if you either don't know, or aren't allowed to comment. Just curious if it's something that's even a point of discussion or if everybody considers the issue closed, done, over, fini...

It's safe to assume that for anything that's even mildly controversial externally, there's a ton of internal discussion as well. Usually the internal discussion is even more passionate than the external discussion.

I'm an advocate for the idea that Google wants to compete on a level playing field, which leads directly to the fact that I believe Google should also support open standards and interoperability. That means that any time we aren't doing that, we need to have a really, really good reason for it. That said, after a ton of discussion about XMPP internally, I understand the team's decision and their reasons.

Thanks for sharing. It's good to know that there is (probably) at least some discussion about this stuff. If anything, maybe you could give them a little nudge in the direction of releasing a detailed spec (and a reference implementation) of the new Hangout protocol? :-)

I'm sure Googlers will point them to this thread, so feel free to thank them here :)