Google launches calendar service

Google has unveiled an online calendar service that lets people store appointments, get reminders and share their plans with others.

The beta service features several innovations, including 'QuickAdd' which lets people add appointments using natural language, without filling out forms. For example typing "lunch with John 1pm Friday" will create a new calendar entry.

The calendar has been designed to scour Gmail and GoogleMail messages for events, and then automatically offers to add the information to the calendar.

Google said it is working to develop software so that the calendar automatically syncs with Microsoft Outlook, the Palm Treo smartphone and other mobile phone calendars.

Meanwhile, research by Hitwise UK, the online monitoring company, reveals that Google powered 74.8 per cent of all UK internet searches in the four weeks ending 1st April. MSN.co.uk Search is Google’s closest competitor, powering 6.7 per cent of searches, followed by Yahoo on 5.7 per cent.