Google Acquires Timeful To Bring Smart Scheduling To Google Apps

Google has acquired Timeful, a startup designed to make scheduling easier by helping you solve larger goals without requiring you to sweat the details. Timeful’s app analyzes your schedule, and uses it to help you achieve specific goals you have in mind. The features Timeful created will be integrated into Google Apps going forward, and the app will remain available, but the Timeful team is turning its attention to projects at Google so continued support isn’t all that likely.

Timeful got a stealthy start thanks to funding from KPCB, Data Collective, Khosla Ventures and Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade Ventures, and broke cover last March with a public app launch in July. The app works by prioritizing your various activities and time demands, and works with existing calendar software for all major platforms like iCal, Microsoft Exchange or Google Calendar. It takes your existing schedule, adds the things you need to get done, weigh how important those things are and finds time for you to get them done.

The core tech of Timeful involves machine learning aimed at taking the hassle out of combining scheduling and GTD task management. In many ways, it’s doing for calendars and schedules what Inbox is trying to accomplish for email. So it makes sense as an acquisition target for Google, because it seeks to advance the capabilities of Apps to deal with the shift of communication and time-management overwhelmingly online.

Google’s Alex Gawley, director of product management for Gmail, offered the following about Google’s intent for Timeful in a blog post announcing the news:

The Timeful team has built an impressive system that helps you organize your life by understanding your schedule, habits and needs. You can tell Timeful you want to exercise three times a week or that you need to call the bank by next Tuesday, and their system will make sure you get it done based on an understanding of both your schedule and your priorities. We’re excited about all the ways Timeful’s technology can be applied across products like Inbox, Calendar and beyond, so we can do more of the work for you and let you focus on being creative, having fun and spending time with the people you care about.