Google agrees to extend the deadline for ending of the Gmail and Calendar apps support for Windows Phone platform
The competition between the rivals in the tech world is very intense and … merciless. As they say… in war and love everything is fair. However sometimes, the users’ needs are bigger than that and can make the big companies to work together, instead of competing against each other.
Microsoft and Google have a long history of arguing and “fighting” on different battlefields. Google absolutely refuses to develop apps that are compatible with the Microsoft’s platform Windows Phone. Microsoft from other hand has recently tried to provide for its users the full YouTube app that violated Google’s regulations. As a result, Google has stopped the YouTube APIs. The ones who suffer the most from those issues between the companies are users; therefore Google and Microsoft are trying to work together in building a new YouTube app.
This is not the only case where both rivals work together in order to please their users and more specifically, those who use Gmail and Google Calendar for Windows Phone. In the beginning of the year, Google announced that it will end the ActiveSync support for the Microsoft’s platform. If this happens, it will result in no functional Gmail and Google Calendar running on Windows Phone OS. As expected, Microsoft did not just wait quietly for Google to realize its promise. The company is working on CalDAV and CardDAV support that would make both apps functional, even if Google determines the ActiveSync support. The deadline given by Google was 31st of July.
Microsoft has managed to assure the support in the new update for Windows Phone, however the process of updating as GDR 2 is slow and many users have not received the new build yet. Therefore, Google has made a nice gesture towards users to extend the deadline for the ending of the ActiveSync support, this time until the end of the year (31st of December). Those few more months should be enough for Microsoft to provide the needed update with the DAV support for Windows Phone running devices.
Source: TheVerge
