Hands up if you use Google Calendar, wow, that’s a lot of hands. Now, hands up if you still make use of SMS Notifications… Ah, not so many hands. If there’s one thing that Google has become good at over the last few years it’s getting rid of the no longer used features, the no longer necessary hangers-on. Sometimes, Google gets it wrong, but I doubt many will be reaching for a flaming pitchfork at the news that Google Calendar will no longer serve up SMS Notifications beyond June 27th. After a week packed full of Google News, it just keeps on coming. We recently saw the announcement of My Account from Google, and now Google Calendar is losing a feature.
Google is announcing that Google Calendar will no longer serve up SMS Notifications past June 27th, unless you’re a Google Apps for Education, Government or Work user that is. Google have said that the choice has been taken because well, SMS messages don’t offer the same sort of rich notifications that you can already get through whichever Calendar app you’ve synced with Google’s service. Not only that, but as they rightly pointed out, users on Android and iOS can get access to the pretty sweet Google Calendar from the search giant itself and enjoy rich push notifications. The full statement from Google is as follows:
“Starting on June 27th, 2015, SMS notifications from Google Calendar will no longer be sent. SMS notifications launched before smartphones were available. Now, in a world with smartphones and notifications, you can get richer, more reliable experiences on your mobile device, even offline.”
While it seems like SMS just refuses to die these days, it is steadily becoming less and less useful. No longer serving up notifications for Google Calendar uses is perhaps just a small scratch in the ever more besmirched armor that SMS shambles around in these days, but it’s one more blow nonetheless. We doubt that many of our readers will need to go out and rethink how they get their Google Calendar notifications now that SMS is out the window, but maybe give your parents a quick call and let them know the bad guys, m’kay?