Google Calendar: No more texts for you

If you’re someone who has relied heavily on Google Calendar and the ability to receive text messages from the service, with reminders for upcoming events, we have some bad news. Google has announced that the texting service attached to Google Calendar will cease to exist, and no more texts will be sent after June 27th.

Starting on June 27th, 2015, SMS notifications from Google Calendar will no longer be sent. SMS notifications launched before smartphones were available. Now, in a world with smartphones and notifications, you can get richer, more reliable experiences on your mobile device, even offline.

Now if you are using Google Apps for Work, Education or Government, you have nothing to worry about. Google has decided to keep the text messages coming with Google Calendar for those users.

Google recommends either finding a calendar application that you are comfortable with, or installing the Google Calendar application on your Android device or iPhone. While in the day and age that we live in now, this isn’t the end of the world.

Notifications can be set, and there are literally hundreds of different calendar apps available across iOS and Android. So, this isn’t really too much to be concerned with. However, it’s interesting to see Google shutting down this service that’s been around since before smartphones were readily available to the world.

If you are currently subscribed to the Google Calendar SMS notifications, you can opt out via two different ways. The first being through the web interface, and the other through a text message. In order to opt-out of the Google Calendar SMS through the web interface, here are the steps you need to follow:

• Open Google Calendar
• Click the Settings Gear in the top right
• Select Settings
• Open the Calendars tab
• Click Edit notifications
• Uncheck the boxes in the SMS column
• Click Save

If you want to just send a simple text message to cancel the notifications, simply text “STOP” to “GVENT” (48368). Once completed those reminder notifications will cease to occur, so be sure to have your backup plan in place before proceeding.

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