Google is a giant lab and every once in a while we see a list of projects that the sultan of search (aka Google) has decided to kill off. As part of its winter cleaning program, we learned that it will terminate public support for ActiveSync (for all but paying customer using Google Apps business, Government and education). Google will grandfather existing accounts with ActiveSync but will not allow new accounts to use it (past January 31 2013).

As a workaround, Google recommends users leverage IMAP (mail), CalDAV (Calendar) and CardDAV (Contacts). This means software vendors will also have to update their software to account for this new process (including how Microsoft Windows 8 connects back to GMAIL).

I tried the CalDAV and CardDAV and they worked flawlessly on my iphone. It is a slightly longer procedure to set I up but not too bad. Software developers can do the heavy lifting in their apps and make the experience almost seamless to their users (if they want to). I can't wait to see how Android devices and tablet handle this change.

You can read the full winter cleaning note here.  It also talks about getting rid of some unpopular google calendar features.