Google to axe TXT reminders for Calendar events

Google has emailed users of its Calendar service to advise them that “Starting on June 27th, 2015, SMS notifications from Google Calendar will no longer be sent.”

The Chocolate Factory's reasoning for the cessation of TXT reminders is that “SMS notifications launched before smartphones were available. Now, in a world with smartphones and notifications, you can get richer, more reliable experience on your mobile device, even offline.”

Folks who cough up for Google Drive for Work, Google Apps for Work (paid edition), Education and Government customers are spared the demise of TXT reminders. The rest of us will have to get by with Android tinklings alone.

There's decent logic behind Google's argument that TXT reminders are an artefact from a bygone age. Note, also, that Google's now a prolific user of TXT for two-factor authentication. Your correspondent wonders if someone at the company looked at a spreadsheet tallying outbound TXT expenses for all services and decided calendar reminders need to go to keep that sum a tidy one. Google doubtless buys TXT messages in bulk, so may do even better than the US$0.01 per message it's easy to find online. But with a billion or more Android devices out there, even those costs add up. ®