Just as Google Calendar is getting its own Labs section, Gmail Labs is setting “Tasks” free to make its way into the regular version. Introduced in Labs last December, Tasks was intended to be a lightweight task scheduler, more of a “to do” list than a calendar. Now a full blown feature in Gmail, it is accessible under the Contacts link above the chat.

“We launched Gmail Labs as a forum for delivering useful (and maybe not so useful) features that might not be quite ready for prime time. The idea was always that the most popular and viable Labs features would graduate and be made more readily available to all users...and that some of the less used, less viable ones would disappear forever,” James Watts, Google software engineer, wrote. “I'm proud to announce that Tasks is in that first bucket — it's been one of the most popular experimental Gmail features and it's now the first graduate from Labs.“

As many people were already using Gmail to keep track of things they had to do, the feature was first introduced to help them better organize their tasks. The interface is as simple as it gets; a small popup comes up in the right bottom corner allowing you to add new tasks, mark old ones as completed or delete them if they are unnecessary.

Since it was introduced, Tasks continued to evolve; as such, it is now available for mobiles too and also as a gadget for iGoogle. Several other tweaks were made and support for more languages was added. Finally, probably the most useful feature, Tasks was integrated with Google Calendar so adding a task in Gmail would also make it available in Calendar. Now the search giant believes the feature is ready for prime time so it introduced it to the Gmail version tens millions of people are using around the world.