Google announced that it has made available the CalDAV and CardDAV APIs to developers.
In October 2012, Google accounted for developers wanting to maximize access to Gmail contacts by adopting the CardDAV protocol. Developed by the IETF, CardDAV is based itself on the WebDAV protocol to synchronize the contact cards in vCard format. Google makes further use CalDAV to automatically transfer the calendar events online to a third party application.
Earlier this year, Google explained that the programming interfaces associated with Google Calendar CalDAV would be reserved for some of its partners. However, Piotr Stanczyk, an engineer at Google, said he received a lot of requests from developers.
Both APIs are available freely. Note that authentication with a Google Account will be made via the OAuth 2.0 protocol. Specifically, these APIs may allow a third party to design an application completely rethinking the ergonomics of calendar or address book as Mailbox App could do for email.
Note also that, as of July 30, Google will completely abandon the Exchange ActiveSync technology. Microsoft who board on CalDAV and CardDAV should then benefit from these APIs to make use of it in Windows Phone so that users keep their data synchronization properly.
