Microsoft has limited the support for synchronization of Google Account, with an update to the standard apps in Windows 8. The company has limited support for Google's Exchange ActiveSync for Mail, Calendar and Contact syncing. The ActiveSync protocol is used in Windows apps to synchronize with Google's servers.
The updates for the standard Windows 8 applications are currently available in the Windows Store and bring several performance improvements and new features. But after the update the applications show a warning that the account needs to be reconnected. To connect to the Google services again Microsoft asks users to delete their Google account and add it again.
When done, the Google account is connected again and users will notice that Microsoft has imposed some new restrictions. It's no longer possible to sync agendas with Google Calendar and contacts can only be synced with one Google account.
It's unclear why Microsoft is restricting users this way. Google has announced that it would end support for Active Sync in January this year but decided to postpone this to at least the end of July this year. More importantly, Google has announced that it will continue to offer the service for existing users only, and new users will not be able to sign up anymore. Google also announced that it continues to offer ActiveSync support for business users.
Windows Phone, which also use Google Sync to sync with Google accounts will continue to work with ActiveSync connections until CardDAV and CalDAV are supported in the operating system. CardDAV and CalDAV are standards for exchanging contacts and calendars. Whether Microsoft will add CalDAV and CardDAV support into Windows 8 is unknown, but since Windows 8 and Windows Phone seem to share more and more features this would be a logical step.
