Thanks so much for all the replies. I probably want too much. One of the things I like about calendars in Outlook (and Mac Entourage) is that I can color-code types of events, so there are quick visual clues to the on-call schedule as opposed to meetings or vacations. I don't think Google Calendar (either the free or business subscription versions) support that.

Also, what I read about mobile sync indicates that Google Calendar uses Exchange Activesync to push data to the iPhone (there's apparently a more feature laden synchronization with Android devices, which certain would be expected...

Question that comes up there is, if ActiveSync will only move a user's primary calendar data to an iPhone, how can Google Calendar leverage the same synchronization utility to push a shared calendar to the mobile devices?