Google dropped its long-awaited calendar application, cleverly named Google Calendar, on April 13. We’ve done writeups of online calendars before, and swear by other Google offerings like Mail and Reader, so taking the new kid for a test drive seemed like the thing to do.

I’ve stayed away from previous web calendar offerings, because none of them had quite all the features I was looking for. Here’s the short list, and how gCal stacks up.

• Importable. There’s no way I’m entering all my existing appointments by hand. I click “Manage calendars” and see an option to import a calendar. There’s a file picker and a note saying gCal can import calendars in CSV (for Outlook) or iCal (everyone else) format. Once it gets my file, it even asks me which categories I want to include. All my iCal events jump right in.
  
  
  
  What about online calendars like Backpack or Yahoo!? In the sidebar, there’s a section called “My Calendars” that shows me the calendar I just imported, and under that a “Other Calendars” section. Both have big plus buttons next to them. I click the plus sign next to “Other calendars” and have several options. I know my Backpack calendar URL, so I click the “Public Calendar Address” tab, paste my URL in, and there’s my Backpack calendar. You can even copy events from those other calendars to your personal calendar. Check.

• Intelligent. Forget popup date pickers. I want to type in “Lunch with Jimbo thu 1pm”, hit enter, and see the appointment show up on my calendar in the right place. So I try just that. My lunch date shows up in just the right place, with a length of one hour. What if it’s a three-martini lunch? A little handle at the bottom of the event lets me drag it out to two hours. If I go to today’s view, the calendar automatically scrolls to the next hour from now, so my next appointment is always at the top of the screen. Check.
  
  
  
  

• Shareable. When I create a new event, I can invite others to it, and even allow those others to invite others if I want to. I click “Manage calendars” and there’s an option to share my whole calendar. Clicking that link opens up a wealth of options: don’t share, share with the world, share only free/busy status, and share with only certain people. I’m not sure how to tell it who I want to share with, so I start typing in the “Add a new person” text box. Google pops up a list of matches from my Gmail contact list. Nice. I hit Save. Google notices that the person I added doesn’t have a Google Calendar account and asks me if I want to send them an invitation. It’s the PayPal viral marketing model. Brilliant.
  
  
  
  I use Apple’s iCal to keep appointments on my desktop. Even the most responsive web application can’t beat locally running software. I’d like to keep the “master” copy of my schedule online, so I can see it from anywhere, but I’d rather view it on my desktop whenever I’m at my own computer. If I go back to “Manage calendars” and select “Calendar Details”, I see my calendar’s URL displayed in XML and iCal format. I copy this link, open iCal, select the Subscribe option and paste in my link. Now my Google calendar is visible to iCal. If I want to make changes, though, I’ll need to do it from within Google. Check.

• Searchable. Being a Google offering, all of your calendars are completely searchable. Which brings up my one feature request. If you need to keep track of your time for billing purposes, how cool would it be to just search for “Acme” at the end of the month, and have all of your Acme time show up in a list, nicely added up for you? Google Calendar doesn’t do this — yet. You see a list of all matching events, but no time information other than the start time of each event. Check.

• Easy to use. I did all of the above without having to open up the help screen once. Everything is dynamic, draggable, clean, and pretty. Responsiveness is better than Gmail. Check.

Google Calendar has been anticipated for a while now, but it was worth the wait. Google doesn’t enter a market (email, shopping, maps) until they have a shot at getting it right. Not perfect, but right. Then they quietly beat your expectations by sneaking in features you didn’t know you couldn’t live without. This is how you become the world’s dominant software company — and you don’t even have to charge for most of your products.