Yesterday Google announced that it will not restrict the CalDav access to their calendars to registered partners only, but that they will continue to provide it for everyone. Additionally, Google now offers CardDav support.
A couple of weeks ago Google announced that they would restrict CalDav access to their calendars to registered developers only. That resulted in a huge uproar among developers, users and open standards advocates and made many people wondering if Google will become a closed standards/software company in the future.
However, the pressure (and most likely the bad press and reputation) Google got worked, and they announced that the CalDav API will be continued as an API open for everyone:
In response to those requests, we are keeping the CalDAV API public.
And it becomes even better: CardDav support is added as well, meaning the address data can be accessed via open protocols as well:
And in the spirit of openness, today we’re also making CardDAV – an open standard for accessing contact information across the web – available to everyone for the first time.
This way CalDav and CardDav have an even better chance to become THE royalty free and open alternative to Microsoft’s ActiveSync protocol. Additionally, application developers don’t have to worry to add special code to support Google calendars and address books: they just add CalDav and CardDav support and they automatically support almost all groupware servers and services available.
This is good news and gives me back some trust in Google’s policies and priorities. There is still no CalDav or CardDav support in Android, yes – but at least the server side is better now.
/home/liquidat 
They do this only under pressure, so their mindset is worrying, at least to me. Certainly not giving me trust in their policies.
Carsten, yeah, the fact that pressure was needed is worrying me as well… I wonder if the pressure will lead their mind back to where it came from…