It's increasingly looking like Google is making it hard for other platforms except it's own Android and iOS(can't ignore iOS because of the number of users) to interoperate with its services like Youtube, Gmail, Calendar etc.
Calendar API wasn't the worst - okay, I didn't get any response from Google guys on a bug I ran into, but they eventually fixed it (and lack of user support is pretty much a norm for them now).
The situation with Spreadsheets is way worse - the API is pretty much abandoned, no changes or any reaction to bugs/complaints for a few months now. They'd roll out a new API version, remove the old documentation (instead of marking it as deprecated but accessible), but the new documentation is really lacking - only has examples in C#, and even these are incomplete.
So, yeah, moving from open standards to their own API is very bad - not just because it's locking up people or something, but also because they are not supporting _their own APIs_ properly.
And before the Google army comes in, let me say one thing. I used to love Google. Used all of their services. Built stuff with their services. Each computer I touched got Chrome installed. I was a fan boy. But then they started changing. Ever since G+, they just seem hell bent on becoming a social network. That shit really pissed me off. How do you simply go from awesome company to this? I'll tell you how. Because its now being run by people who put profits first, and not the users/programmers. They seem to have forgotten that it was us who gives them the profits they get. Such is the reason I'm building Nuuton. Because fuck you Google.
Maybe that's fine with them (seems like they have a corporate mission to eliminate the whole idea of free or nearly-free web APIs anyway), but regardless of their motivations they've proven to be a non-reliable provider of stable free-to-use web APIs over the past couple of years.
You can't built bridges on top of shaky ground.
Google is clearly not an open source company.
With the death of Reader, my last shred of goodwill is basically gone. I've used an @gmail.com address for the past six years despite having my own domain, and now that's going to stop as I gradually transition off most of their services.
That's why I will 'never' embrace cloud that tightly.
We have heard it before, with Microsoft, we are hearing it again with Google, and we will hear it again with someone else in the future.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
Just because they didn't satisfy your demands you decide to take such a drastic turn? Perhaps they were trying to satisfy other casual Internet users as well.
Not to say you're wrong or whatever, but a huge company like Google tries to satisfy as many people as possible to increase their market-share. I don't necessarily see something wrong as long as all the negative side affects aren't solely absorbed by the consumer.
There's nothing wrong with compromises here and there - any healthy relationship consistently needs to deal with them.
If that is the tipping point for you, then by all means show support for alternatives. I know I do a terrible job at ensuring Google isn't the only player in the game.
I imagine a pinboard.in like service but for mail (cheap, fast, simple, run by a developer that I trust to worst case mail me a DVD of my mail history). I'd jump to that very quickly.
One problem we have is that Android doesn't natively support CalDav, so we can't integrate with the built-in Android calendar like we can with iOS's calendar.
For those that work with calendars, CalDav is a well documented standard for sharing calendar data. It robustly handles all the use cases that we've been able to think of (including edge cases).
It's disappointing to hear that Google will discontinue the service. I'm sure lots of iOS and Mac users use the CalDav sync to natively sync their Google Calendar to their devices. How will users of native apps be able to get their calendar now?
Edit: I forgot they're turning off ActiveSync for free users later this year
I have been a long time android user and had every intention of continuing down that path, but recently my job has required me to use Exchange ActiveSync to access my corporate mail & calendar data on my device, its a bit of a hassle but at least it's supported.
Does this mean that future versions of android will not have support for such a (common business related) setup?
If this is true I foresee it alienating a large portion of their user base.
I'm not sure what the plan is now. Hopefully Apple will be in the approved third party list for extended CalDAV support.