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Google Launches 'Keep' To Rival Evernote
Today Google launched 'Google Keep', a mobile note-taking service to rival software like Evernote. It works on devices running Android 4.0 or later, and there's also a web interface (which is struggling under launch load as of this writing). Google describes the service thus:
"With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand. If it’s more convenient to speak than to type that’s fine—Keep transcribes voice memos for you automatically. There’s super-fast search to find what you’re looking for and when you’re finished with a note you can archive or delete it."
Fans of Google Reader will probably be a bit hesitant to pick this up.
I will try very hard to never use new Google products. As they are a company that cannot be relied on to to support a product despite the number of people who become dependent on it. I have been already burnt by Google Notebook, and now Google Reader. They just decided to yank the product. Now they greedily crawl back in with Google Keep. You should not be keeping anything with Google if you really want to keep it for a long time. They are an untrustworthy company.
I'm pretty sure that's when this will get the axe.
I'm pretty sure Evernote will not suddenly "retire" its service and leave users out to dry. Sorry, Google Keep. Even if you're everything I ever dreamed of, you've arrived at the wrong place and the wrong time.
There's always money in the banana stand.
I've been burned by too many "non-core" Google applications to even be bothered to try this. I mean, look up the old Google Notebook. Basically the same thing. If it ain't search, advertising, or social.... it's only a matter of time till you get scroogled. (Funny I thought that was the dumbest MS campaign ever....but it's starting to grow on me).
Anyone remember Google Notebook...?
...until it's Gone...?
You mean when they made a search engine? Or a webmail client? Or online maps? Or office apps? Or an RSS reader? Or a calendar? Or a finance site? Or a chat program? Or a photo site? Or an online store? Or a social site? Or a phone OS?
None of these things are "innovations", none of them were particularly innovative, and they weren't doing any of them first (or even early), but in many cases they were better/easier/free-as-in-beer-er than the alternative. Which is fine. And they made money on it. Which is great. And when they stop working (like Reader), we'll find something else, or write something else. Since they make getting your data out pretty easy, that's not even hard.
And if you've become complacent where if Google doesn't offer it, you can't find it, that's not innovation... that's you being lazy. And it's not their fault, it's yours.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
are you intentionally being obtuse or is this really how short sighted you are? Did you even read the summary at all?
One of the main points of cloud based note applications like Evernote and Google Keep is to keep notes automatically in sync between many devices. This along with local and remote copies ensure your notes do not get lost.
Sorry to break your rant.
Many people here are pooh-poohing the new service for various reasons. I just wanted to provide a counter point.
I tried evernote. I did not like it. I generally like the services Google provides and in the manner they do. I understand that nothing is guaranteed. And that one day this service may too disappear and I am OK with that. This is a price I am willing to pay.
Not to mention that things like Evernote do a lot of processing on the data you send them that would be onerous on a portable device. For example, if I snap a pic of a business card, the text on that card is OCR'd and made searchable. That would suck hard on a phone; it's much easier to offload that capability (and corpus!) to the cloud. This saves me precious battery and improves the quality of my results.
The issue isn't network-based computing, it's that we don't have the controls in place to assert control of our data on a provider's equipment; we are forced to trust that they won't do Bad Things. And that's a problem.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
I mean, a slightly different interface, but substantially the same. And Google killed that product; why do we think this time around will be better?
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
I wonder if they realize that people who are now Readerless are going to avoid relying Google products/services in future. Certainly there is no way I would build life habits around any Google service now. You don't want to get too used to using anything of theirs, don't get too comfortable. Then they will wonder why their new products aren't taking off any more.
Except for their products. They don't seem very interested in keeping those around.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I've used both Evernote and Springpad, and stuck with the latter, but after fiddling around with the web interface on Google Keep for a while, my question is: this is supposed to be a rival service? It looks more like something from the example page of a web app library. All you seem to able to do is enter text notes, and lists. Perhaps Keep for Android has more functionality, but just comparing between the web versions of all three, Keep doesn't have 1/10th of the capability of either of the others. It's like comparing Word with Notepad.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
All they need now is services called "Lose" and "Weep".
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yeah, but let me tell you that users who used Google Reader are those who read and write a lot. Each of them is easily worth 10 plain users. I was burned by that and right now I'm busy moving quite a few users and one business away from Google. Google kicking out ActiveSync and in six months CalDAV isn't exactly helping them here. Google is starting to feel somewhat uncomfortable all of a sudden. There has been a widely felt uncomfortable feeling about Google's potential to abuse their power for quite a while but all of this is the first time Google makes this potential into something you have to deal with. And this is not a good feeling.
Google is changing right now. Even those working there notice that. Google is dropping right now all the attributes that made nerds comfortable with it. It is turning into something else.
It would be nice if Evernote's local database was in an open format - if it is, it's not obvious (there is an API, but I haven't investigated to see if there's a way to use it should the cloud side of the service go AWOL tomorrow). It's easy enough to export all of the notes into HTML, though, and doing that from time to time as a backup is probably a good idea.
The Evernote client already has a feature to export all the data from the locally stored notebooks/databases to HTML or to an Evernote XML file (which isn't that hard to parse). This is independent of the cloud export features. It includes notes and attachments. If that isn't enough, it looks like the local database is really just some SQLite DB's, so it wouldn't be that hard to write something to pull the data out directly.
I was commenting on the fact that keeping things in sync between many devices could be done with a floppy disk as early as 1982,
You're clearly either being intentionally obtuse, as GP noted, or else you have such poor reading skills that you didn't notice or understand the word "automatically" that was there in his comment.
My privacy is worth rather more than the convenience of "keeping notes automatically in sync between many devices."
So don't use it. A lot of people, myself and GP included, don't care about the privacy of simple notes while preferring the convenience of auto-sync. This service is for us. With your priorities, it's clearly not for you. Yet you were the one coming out to question other people's choices. Insulting, indeed.
keeping things in sync between many devices could be done with a floppy disk as early as 1982
If you went back in time by 15 years, and suggested on Slashdot that keeping data in sync using a sneakernet was a better option than using the Internet, you would've been laughed at. I mean, that's what networks are for, and only knucklegrinders and noobs copy files around on physical media. But now, we don't call it a a "network" anymore, we call it the "cloud", and so therefore it's stupid?
I know that the term "cloud" is overused and silly, but networks are a great piece of technology and remote storage often makes more sense than local storage. Especially for applications like this.
Also, if you're concerned about data mining, Evernote don't do any data mining (or at least, that's what they claim in their TOS). Just because a service is on the cloud, doesn't mean that they are necessarily mining your data.
If you really want Google to delete everything they know about you, go to accounts.google.com and click the link that says "Close account and delete all services and information associated with it."
Google already cannot resell your data to anyone. You made that part up.
Whenever google is criticized for yanking a "free" service, such comments come up. but is anything from google free? Sure its may not ask for money, but in google your eyeball is the product, and they make money from ads.
Lets take gmail.
Now its free. If google yanks it, many people will troll "it was free" "ask for a refund".
But when I open gmail, I see ads. So in a way google is making money.
No company is in it for charity.;
And no company is above criticism. There is nothing wrong to feel bad or criticize the company if it cans a product you were dependent upon. "Ask for a refund" what kind of response is that. And just because its pro google, it gets modded to "insightful"!
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