Google to halt support for Exchange in Gmail, calendar and contacts on January 30th

Google (GOOG) on Friday announced plans to no longer support a variety of services in an effort to renew its focus on “creating beautiful, useful products that improve millions of people’s lives every day.” The changes will begin on January 4th when the company shuts down several less popular features in its Calendar service, including the ability to create a new appointment and check the calendar through text messaging. Google will also discontinue support for its Sync service, which allows users to access Gmail, Calendar and Contacts through Microsoft’s (MSFT) Exchange ActiveSync protocol. The service will be shut down for new consumers on January 30th, although the company will continue to support Sync for existing connections and its business, government and education customers.