New changes to Google Events could be another piece to Google’s social network puzzle

The Google Calendar, for all of its uses, has always been clunky at best when it came to doing anything more than just posting in a new meeting or small note. Google, seeing this, has made some pretty significant changes to the Events scheduling system within Calendar, and it’s looking pretty slick.

Among the new features, you’ll find easier ways to edit repeating events. Instead of taking up your entire window as before:

Beyond the repeating events, there is also a new tool to help you find an appropriate time for them. If other people have shared their calendar with you, the tool will look through the calendars of all parties and find a time when you can all get together:

While both of these features are quite handy, the interesting part is not so much the features themselves but rather the social aspect of the Find a Time tab. Facebook has been in the event scheduling business for quite some time, and has had a leg up on the competition in it.

The new Google Calendar features, to be honest, look a lot like event scheduling within Facebook, and I’m guessing that this is no coincidence:

For those who have linked their Facebook and Gmail accounts, you’ll already have your Facebook contacts within your Gmail list. That access opens the door to scheduling your events in Google Calendar, and inviting anyone whose email address you know, not just those people you have on Facebook.

As we’ve said in the past, Google seems to be aiming for a social system, rather than a social network site. As the new Google Calendar features roll out to more users in the coming weeks, could this be another piece of Google’s social puzzle?