Google Calendar is getting a small update today that adds autocomplete for locations and instant search results as you type to the company’s calendaring solution.
With the new location autocomplete, adding addresses to an event finally becomes less of a chore and error prone. You just start typing and Google will try to predict your intentions. Once your friends or colleagues receive the invitation, they can just click on the ‘map’ link in their calendar to see where the event will take place.
Type-ahead search in Calendar is also a relatively small update, but one that will also save quite a bit of time. Same here: just start typing and Google will show you all the potential results in a drop-down menu under the search form.
As the company previously announced in November, when invitations are sent to a group, the calendar will now automatically update when people join or leave a group. This means event guest lists will be automatically updated and users don’t have to worry about missing an event when they join a new group or getting irrelevant updates once they leave.
While Google regularly updated Gmail and many of its other productivity tools over the last few months, Calendar always lagged behind a bit. The last major update to Calendar was adding Latin American Spanish as an option in April, after all. It’s good to see the company put some effort behind its online calendar again. While it’s a pretty capable calendaring solution, there’s plenty of room for improvement here, so hopefully we’ll see a bit more of that in the months to come.