Google Calendar Adds Calendar Browsing, Complicates Searching
Google has added a directory of public calendars to Google Calendar to make browsing and finding calendars a little bit easier. The new directory is organized into 8 categories: popular, TV shows, sports, events, entertainment, miscellaneous, holidays, and Google-related.
The new listings contain calendars from across the web as well as those created in Google Calendar. As a nice touch there’s a “preview” option that will overlay a calendars events on top of your current calendar before you commit to subscribing.
Unfortunately Google has made searching your public calendars the default option. There’s a new button that will restrict searches to your own agenda, but typing a search and hitting return will only show results from your public calendars, which seems backwards to me.
Why not search personal events by default? Or at least both by default. Hopefully Google will address this unnecessary complication issue in the future.
In fact, as Ionut Alex Chitu points out on Google Operating System, the new features have complicated Google Calendar in other ways as well.
The fact that Google Calendar complicates itself unnecessarily is obvious if you look at how many options are available to add a new calendar: you can add a public calendar, or the calendar of one of your contacts, you can enter the URL or just upload it. And each option has a different place in the interface.
While it’s now easier to find calendar data, it’s much more complex to organize and search it, making Google’s upgrade something of letdown.
Previously finding calendars was possible only by searching.
