Questions re: Gmail Sidebar Gadget Deprecation

Question

We stumbled across a deprecation notice for the Gmail sidebar gadgets at https://developers.google.com/gmail/sidebar_gadgets which states that

Warning: Gmail sidebar gadgets are now deprecated and will soon cease to be supported.

This statement and the website are unclear and we cannot find any deprecation notice with specific dates and impact.

Additionally, since the add gadget by URL lab was deprecated, most of this page can't be used anyway.

However, we deployed a gadget via the marketplace which is crucial to our operation of Google Apps because of the Google Apps 50K contacts limit.

I've submitted a ticket to the GWSC with the following questions but I figured I would mention it here as well since we are a bit shocked to have stumbled on this notice and that it hasn't been shared via any channels we have found. Perhaps I missed it?

• Does this sidebar_gadget deprecation apply to marketplace apps such as the one USAID wrote and is using?
• Can you please point me to the official deprecation notice and especially the date of impact?
• What will be replacing the sidebar gadget as this is an integral part of our day to day use of Google Apps?

Any input appreciated as I'm specifically worried that Google did not anticipate people doing things with sidebar in marketplace apps and when they took away the gadget by URL lab, they thought they killed the only avenue to using these gadgets. Hopefully, I'm worried for naught and marketplace apps are fine but...

Regards, KAM

Answer 1

Google usually perform spring-cleanings. Usually announces around march-april which features will be removed, and by july-august performs removal. However marking a feature as deprecated does not necesarilly mean immediate removal.

Also, maybe this is related to Google G-suite marketplace: https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/

BTW: in any situation, combine something that "is crucial to our operation" and something that depends on a closed SaaS or cloud plattform it's usually not a good idea, except if your data/services/developments can be moved to other platformS.