It shocks me that the default calendar for android does not interoperate with any calendar server except gmail's (unless you can shoe-horn events in with a separate caldav app.)
The Gmail Web Calendar has many good features I agree.
But, the Android Calendar would be much better if it would work with other calendar servers besides Gmail. If google called the Android Calendar the Gmail Calendar App, it would be more appropriate. But, this current default android calendar app doesn't use the CalDav protocol and only works with the gmail calendar. This is very peculiar behavior and not what I'd expect from google.
I've got a number of .ical calendars added to the web interface, and all of them both appear on my phone, and get updated without me going to the web interface. I'm not sure if my device retrieves them, or whether google's servers do it for me (probably the latter). It would be handy to have a full calendar app though.
It shocks me that the default calendar for android does not interoperate with any calendar server except gmail's (unless you can shoe-horn events in with a separate caldav app.)