It has been one of my beefs with Google that they didn’t have a task manager to go along with all their other productivity apps. Then, they released a lightweight attempt at a task manager that integrated with Gmail (available in the Labs).

Yesterday, Google announced tasks now integrated with Google Calendar. You will see a link for “Tasks” on the upper left side of the screen. When you click it, you’ll see a task list appear on the opposite side. Click on any task to edit it. Click the little arrow and you can edit details like due date, notes, and which list it goes on.

Toward the bottom of the task column, you can add/remove new lists, indent tasks (to make nested tasks) and a few other operations.

Tasks with due dates will appear on your calendar. You can modify a task’s due date by dragging it on the calendar. Tasks also have a little checkbox next to them so you can check it off when its done.

All in all, it is still pretty lightweight. However, it belongs with Calendar much more than it belongs in Gmail. And it puts Google much closer to a full-featured Outlook replacement. Now, if they could just add reminder options to the tasks, that’d be awesome.