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As most of you have probably heard, Google is killing CalDAV access and requiring the use of their proprietary API. I use a lot of Google services because they are usually very nice, commonly use open standards and often free as well. However, I have no preference for them as a company. This is why I got up and left when Google dumped CadDAV.
Leaving Google is not an issue, as they have reasonable export options for most of their products. For calendars you can use the export feature to get a standard iCal file with all your calendar data. I chose to move to Yahoo Calendar because they have a free calendar with great CalDAV support. Importing is just as easy as Yahoo calendar can import the same format you got from Google.
Everything up until now has been pretty basic but the one consideration I had when leaving Google calendar was the G+ event sync. This is not as issue though because you can import your Google calender (containing just your G+ events) into your new calendar (read-only). Just go to calendar settings, copy the private iCal url and paste that into the new calendar. One thing to note is that your calendars imported via iCal are not synced using CalDAV. You will just need to add those URLs to your calendar applications alongside your read-write CadDAV calendar. An upcoming post will contain a method I have found to easily manage your iCal calendars.
Even though I could have continued using Google Calendar in my current setup I wanted to show that I’m not okay with non interoperable proprietary systems. Making the shift when it is easy also ensures I won’t get locked in sometime down the road. I am happy, having replaced Google Calendar with Yahoo Calendar and I hope you move away from Google Calendar as well.