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Google Keep Labelled "Delete"
judgecorp writes "The Google Keep note-keeping app has had a frosty reception. Analysts including Gartner have said its functionality is laughable compared to that of the rival Evernote (saying "it's like saying MSFT Paint is a threat to Photoshop") and other users have rejected it on the grounds that after the death sentence on Reader, Google can't be trusted not to pull the plug on a service which people have come to rely on."
Maybe an extra l there?
My first thought was "how can I trust them with this when they just killed reader?"
Don't bother clicking the link.
Yes, we're all mad about reader, and we all should be warned about cloud services shutting down.
Next post please...
I propose we now use "google" instead of "fool".
Google me once, shame on you.
Google me twice, shame on me.
Frosty reception? I beg to differ, people all over the internet seem to love it. Design especially.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1aoo1a/google_keep_googles_notetaking_app_is_live_again/
Check this reddit thread.
Also it works with Google Now on Android, so i can say "Google..Note to self Fix the printer" and it will take the note, save the text AND audio file.
I, personally, like it very much. Evernote is good, but something that integrated into android and synced with my Google account is much better for me.
It's nice to see an application (yeah, I typed out the whole word!) slammed for being too simplistic.
Said everyone with a gmail account. Honestly, even if they do you will still have a copy of your data synced on your devices and the precedent is that you'll be able to get your data anyway.
You can't use the word scroogle without sounding like the worlds biggest Microsoft shill.
as pitchman, and rename the product "Keep it Maybe".
Features laughable compared to Evernote? I used to use a text file. Before that a piece of paper. What kind of useful features does it have? Can I search Evernote from gmail? Can I access it from Google Drive? Maybe once they implement these essential features I will look at it.
"Google can't be trusted not to pull the plug on a service which people have come to rely on" - They've just now realized this? LOL.
Most people on /. have known this for years.
Google knows what it's doing when it comes to search (including maps), and (after several years) Android - everything else is stuff built/rolled out/supported by disparate uncoordinated groups with no coherent strategy or purpose beyond "hey, this looks like something the PR guys would like."
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For some things simplicity is best. iOS Notes or Google Tasks where you have just basic information and easy input for simple things and it can be synced. Google Keep is good for a notepad/post-it note app currently, a scratch pad. But it is a long ways away from being a robust note storing and organizing tool such as SimpleNote or Evernote or OneNote. They should have just bought one of those type and incorporated it if they wanted to compete.
Plus now with their credibility in killing apps, no one will use this for serious note taking. If they don't, then whats the point for Google? Not much to be gleaned from scanning scratch notes, at least they didn't think so when they got rid of Google Notebook.
If you think it's bad here, you should see reddit. "Opinion setting" at it's most caustic and depraved state.
The alternative is you pay for it with money instead of data. Its your choice, no one is forcing it on you.
I've never heard of a character named "Shcroogle".
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Just don't try and attach video clips or pictures to your Evernotes or you'll run out of your 60MB/month and have to pay for premium service.
I am more than glad that Google has become a music label, and that they signed Delete, they make very fine punk rock.
Also, naming their recording and artists's lair "The Keep" is mighty fun.
Ok, so we know that Google have issues with trusting apps at the moment.
It would be easier if Google just bought em. Ready made solution requiring little "start from scratch and try and compete"
That way, they get a ready made market. Few people are going to abandon it because it forms part of their "Digital life"
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
As I remind my students, "Beta" to Google means they haven't figured out how to profit on it. If they can find a way to profit on it, it then becomes one of their many appliances. If they can't, it gets killed. Clearly, Google didn't have a way to profit on Reader, as they couldn't on Wave, as they couldn't on Health. If they can find a way to profit from Keep, it'll keep. Otherwise it'll be gone like the rest.
I remember when Chrome first came. I thought Google was wasting their time because Firefox was clearly the best browser, and there was no reason to think it would ever stop being the best. And the browser market already seemed too crowed with IE, Safari, Firefox, and Opera all competing for market share.
Keep now is not what Keep will be in the future. Google search, Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome, Android, and many other Google products are almost indistinguishable from what they were during their first iteration. And of those I listed, Gmail and Google Maps are the only ones I would say were actually better from the competition from day 1.
Evernote should be sweating at least a little bit.
The additional L required to typo "Scroogle" from "Scrooge" is clear on the other side of a QWERTY keyboard
That's not what I was trying to imply. One could have arrived at "Google is acting like Scrooge" pun independently from Microsoft's ad campaign that began in November 2012. I just checked Google Search (Search tools > Any time > Custom range) for January 2008 through October 2012, and there were plenty of hits for "Scroogled". Is a short story by Cory Doctorow enough?
Correction - you can't use the word "scroogle" without sounding like someone employed by Microsoft.
#DeleteChrome
I really agree with a lot of points you're making, but there's something about this whole thing that, to me, speaks volumes about the absurdity of computing today.
What the hell is "serious note taking"? Is there really some situation where I would need to sync my notes across my desktop and mobile phone, where I couldn't just put it in my phone to begin with? Isn't this all what saving to your computer, or in a cloud folder, or a text editor is all about?
I really don't mean to knock Evernote--I understand why people like it--and also can understand people's skepticism of where Google has been going since management changed there, especially given their recent track history. But I also think there's a tempest in a teacup quality to all of this. I mean, the notetaking apps I use don't sync across anything and they're fine. I'm sure Google Keep is fine for 90% of people. I suspect that a large proportion of people using Evernote overvalue their notes, even as a large proportion of people make good use of it.
The reason why Google can integrate these sorts of services, and people use them, is because their value to most people (*most people* being the key here) is so small, but in aggregate is so large to Google.
I worry about Google, and the crap they're pulling makes me take a second use at Evernote, Dropbox, etc. However, even if those services disappeared together with those of Google, would it really hurt me? No.
There's something scary to me when we talk about Google Keep as if it's a nuclear powerplant control system, or a word processing program, or something like that. Some people just want to jot down notes.
I think the case can be made that Google in all it's little projects are pushing tech by being a test bed. I do believe their thinking is to put up any service for free five years as a massive research projects. Their first question isn't if it's profitable but rather rather how useful it is. They leave thoughts of profitability to be answered further down the line. At the end of life of the project if something is just self sustaining I do believe they would rather have someone take over now that they did all the deep market analysis and research on it. If something can be massively profitable then they will maintain it. Sort of like how it's founders came up with a useful search engine.
In other words they do things just because they are interesting. No guarantee to be there in a hundred years. Their main motivation is the research. Google does massive public R&D. Not all of which would be protected by copyrights and patents. I do believe their main goal is to PUSH TECH. To do the research to the point that someone else could take over. A build the prototype and the interest and market will come attitude.
..until I can paste images into it, and paste into lists. I hate to say this, but Microsoft Outlook 2007's compose email is pretty much what I am looking for =)
Personally, I think this one has an excellent chance of sticking around for the same reason that Voice is sticking around. It's a great feature for Android.
That is what I call "the batshit brigade" as these people treat corps like fucking ballclubs. I've noticed its primarily the big three, Apple, Google, and MSFT, but to a lesser extent you get the pro *.A.A "Anything a corp does is great because free market herpa derp!" and the pro gov "America Fuck Yeah!" types but not nearly as bad as the big three, you'd think they were a fucking ballclub.
Now as far as Google...why SHOULD you trust them for a service you depend on after Reader? Its quite obvious there is a metric that if a service doesn't hit Google pulls the plug but they won't tell the user what the metric is, so why should I trust them? As much as I think Windows 8 is a flaming turd this is one thing I have to give MSFT credit for as I can tell you to the day when XP dies, when Vista dies, when 7 dies, and when their Office suites die so I really don't have to give a shit about the metrics. I just look at the date of EOL and that is that. Of course since their software works just fine after EOL (I should know as i had to support several Win2K units until last year) I don't even have to worry about that if I don't want to, but its nice to know.
If Google wants us to depend on their services then they need to give us SOMETHING, anything, that will let us gauge what the support cycle is gonna be. A minimum support date like MSFT, publishing the current userbase along with the minimum number required for them to support it (which would have fixed the Reader problem as those that like Reader could have tried to drum up enough converts to fulfil the metric) or some other gauge so we have a damned clue as to how long its gonna be supported. As it is any service they have could disappear tomorrow because some PHB decides it doesn't meet a metric which we don't even know about and that stinks.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Last time I tried Evernote I was only able to attach a single picture to a note, making it useless for what I wanted it for at the time, and yeah their limit for the free service if pretty low. On the other hand, Keep does seem to do this but has few other features. Personally, I'm hoping that they're taking the "start simple, make it perfect" approach and adding features as they're developed. As it is now, you could replicate the app with a simple DropBox extension.
That would have been more believable if you replied with his username or real name.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Google Reader is a clear example of Google using the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy. They create a service/app in a popular market segment, dominate that market, then kill off the product and try to force users to migrate their other services that they have more control over like Google+.
iGoogle and Buzz are the same.
[Spirit of Internet Present]: My time with you is at an end, Ebenezer Scroogle. Will you profit from what I've shown you of the good in most men's hearts?
[Ebenezer Scroogle]: Profiting from what's in men's hearts is what search engines are all about!
...or "Google Keeps On (Not) 'Keep'-ing On".
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
The l is close to the o, you could easily slip with your right hand while your left is dealing with g and e.
I doubt I'd ever make that particular typo though. Especially twice. And especially when clearly trying to rhyme with Google and "you-gle".
I doubt they are an MS shill though. More likely an unaligned troll, or possibly an MS fanboy. I just don't think anybody can possible believe scroogle will come into popular parlance. Although they did release that godawful commercial, so who knows.
Welcome to the world of free cloud based services, where you the user don't really matter, you own nothing and you should be happy Google gave you the privilege of using something as long as they did....
Google Reader: Survived eight years DESPITE BEING FREE
Evernote: Has only five eight years history BUT CHARGES MONEY FOR APPS AND SERVICES.
Google Keep: ALSO FREE JUST LIKE READER
Huh, I wonder which one may be around after eight more years - the one that pays for it's own existence or the one that's like a pony in the stables of a rich guy with a bad gambling problem?.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm not sure if it's better to blame Google for picking a stupid product name, or the headline writer, but I'm still not sure what "Google Keep Labelled "Delete"" means - even after I finally realised that "Keep" is the product, and not a verb. Who's doing the labelling?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Personally, I think this one has an excellent chance of sticking around for the same reason that Voice is sticking around. It's a great feature for Android.
Yup. In the same way that having a service that made it easy for people to get self-selected articles from authors they know and trust delivered directly to their phones to, uh, "Read" when they had a spare minute would be a great feature too...
The real issue with the google distrust is their current opaqueness.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
What Microsoft gets, and that no other tech company except maybe IBM does (and probably pioneered, no less), is that people were able to run their legacy 16-bit applications up until 64-bit Windows.
And I expect the legacy 32-bit emulation layer for Windows is going to be here to stay, because I don't really see humanity pushing the limits of 64-bit computing for a long, long time.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
>
Now as far as Google...why SHOULD you trust them for a service you depend on after Reader?
How quickly they forget... Google announced the retirement of iGoogle in July 2012, a popular service. It's scheduled to be shut down in November. Google Reader is just the most recent service to be put on the chopping block.
The only Google services that you can trust to stay up at this point is Google search, Google Maps and Gmail. Each of these are making money, in some form or another, for the business. iGoogle, Google Reader, etc. do not... Like it or not, Google is now a corporation with a focus on profits and, in my opinion, the decision has been made by management to not give away anything for free unless there is some way to monetize it (i.e. Ad revenue, etc.). In other words, the MBAs have taken over...
What Microsoft gets,
Yep, Microsoft products and their Kin will always play for sure!
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
and I like it better then evernote.
The cancelling thing is a worry.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Zune IS A GREAT MP3 PLAYER... wat?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I don't really see humanity pushing the limits of 8^H 16^H^H 32^H^H64-bit computing for a long, long time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Same damned thing happened with MSFT, they USED to put out relatively consistent products, now its just rehashing what Apple does even when it makes no damned sense, like putting an iPad style UI on a desktop which even Apple doesn't do.
I personally call this "the curse of PPT math" as that is what seems to be the culprit, a company comes along, builds a base, people start becoming loyal to the product....then here come the beancounters. They start cranking out PPTs and Excel sheets and saying things like "Well if you look at the stock price its obvious we need to do" or "If you look at our competitor's quarterly earnings and stock price then its obvious we need to do"...fuck you you beancounting little shits, unless you are a financial services company on K street you should NOT be focused on pleasing fucking Wall Street, you should be focused on pleasing YOUR CUSTOMERS and making top notch products. do THAT and watch your company grow, don't? You become another risk averse money hungry dinosaur ripe for getting your throat cut by a new company that focuses on listening to the customer instead of Wall Street.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You paid for Windows XP and Office 2003...you didn't pay for Google Reader. Google services are free! Would you stop fucking complaining about a free service being discontinued. I'm sorry your mother stop breast feeding you when you finally left the basement at age 30 to find your job as CEO of who gives a fuck incorporated. You are not entitled to support from a free service!
Pulling Reader was an assinine move. It may not be a hugely popular service, but guess what, the nerds love Reader. Don't piss off the nerds, we remember.
I, for one, am happy that the unhappiness and skepticism resulting from the Reader fiasco is being carried into new product launches.
After I saw the video with audio note taking and lock screen widget (though I don't have a late enough android version darn it) it looked useful with the audio notetaking part. Never got into Evernote (though I have the app).
However my first gut reaction to the announcement was, yeah like I'm going to trust google not to trash it once I've gotten used to it.
Currently I use emailing myself, OnePunch (a memo app), and Circus Ponies Notebook (for Mac only). But I have found this to be insufficient like if I want to take a note immediately - yesterday someone told me a name to google and I forgot it, didn't have time to type it in, and stupidly didn't go for paper and pen that was probably in my pocket.
If I can do instant audio annotation without launching an app that might be useful. Don't know if Evernote can do that but if anything this conversation will push me closer to getting Evernote. No matter how many times I think it, I just don't trust google to do a half-assed launch, get me used to it, and then pull the plug.
The other option of course is just to use pen and paper. That works too, though I find I seldom go back to look at what I've written, it's like storing in a file on a separate hard disk. Whatever, the current situation is not optimal and when I am thinking about changing my notetaking application I think Google's behavior crystallizes my thinking.
Facebook admits hiring PR firm to smear Google
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/12/facebook-admits-hiring-pr-firm-to-smear-google/
Apple's war against Google
http://www.informationweek.com/development/mobility/apples-war-against-google-time-for-new-t/240002054
Microsoft Wage War on Google
http://www.idfmarketing.com/blog/microsoft-wage-war-on-google/
Microsoft spending 7 figures to revive Gmail smear campaign
http://9to5google.com/2013/02/07/microsoft-spending-7-figures-to-revive-gmail-smear-campaign/
The only Google services that you can trust to stay up at this point is Google search, Google Maps and Gmail.
Google Notebook is the predecessor of Keep, and was around since 2006. It was dropped in 2012 and all existing notebooks were imported into Google Docs.
There are many products which have had far shorter lives, and which gave you no opportunity to retain your data.
This latest round of anti-Google FUD is interesting in its intensity. I wonder where the money trail leads this time....
Apple initially 'got it' with the Apple II family of computers, so old software from the 8-bit Apple II were playable on every computer in the A2 line, including the 16-bit Apple IIgs. Forgetting the importance of backwards-compatibility (or, perhaps, Wozniak taking the knowledge with him when he left) very nearly destroyed the company.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
And I knew people that switched to windows precisely because Apple burned them on backwards compatibility. back in the day you did NOT do DTP or graphics on anything but a Mac and I had some friends that had invested heavily in Mac software. when Apple left them high and dry? Boy were they pissed off.
Now sadly we are seeing the same shit with MSFT, windows 8 bombs so what is the word on Windows Blue? "More touch integration!" yeah because every PC has a touchscreen now...facepalm. I swear if they don't fire that fucking sweaty chimp in 5 years MSFT is gonna be RIM, a company that USED to be huge but now only has legacy customers and even they are looking at exit strategies.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I remember Synistar!
I drank what? -- Socrates
Grow up, fanboy.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I know all the google reader users are upset about its demise, but the fact is there just weren't very many of you at all. Sure, the ones that were out there are being very vocal right now, but that doesn't imply large numbers.
I tried, several times, to use google reader for exactly the purpose you describe. Each time I found that there are other tools, both on the PC and Android, that do the same in a better, less clumsy way.
My thought when I saw this is that Keep's revenue model will be to encourage more people to store more data on Google Drive, resulting in more people going over the limit where Drive is free. Google isn't pushing a note keeping service, it's selling storage. Google may also be looking at the data it can extract from a service that it can then sell to advertisers and marketing companies. If Keep sells enough storage and produces sufficient revenue from the quality and quantity of data it generates it will stick around, if not it's a goner.
Can you link to any Google-sponsored smears against these other companies?
You paid for Windows XP and Office 2003...you didn't pay for Google Reader. Google services are free! Would you stop fucking complaining about a free service being discontinued. I'm sorry your mother stop breast feeding you when you finally left the basement at age 30 to find your job as CEO of who gives a fuck incorporated. You are not entitled to support from a free service!
Google Reader, iGoogle (which I personally use and have a replacement for when tbe time comes*), and numerous other Google products that have been cancelled and forgotten, and any products they have now (Google Docs got absorbed into Google Drive, which won't last, it's shittier and nobody is going to pay them more than $5 a month for personal account) and nobody wants file storage that will just evaporate when they pull the plug....
In all that, the PRODUCT is not what Google offers. The PRODUCT is the EYEBALLS those things attract to the ADS that Google sells in them.
The CUSTOMER is the ad-purchasing company.
I think Google's fundamental problem is they attract savvy users, technical users, educated and intelligent ones... the same ones that get annoyed by ads, have vendettas against ads, or simply blocked them years ago and forgot they exist.
Google needs to DUMB DOWN their products to more like crap like imageshack and flickr. Pulling market share from other ad-display companies which is really what they are, hell, even Fark is nagging users about using ad blockers now, the guy that runs it is already wealthy and is now getting greedy.
Only then will these product survive.
YouTube seems to be a perfect storm of retard / tech guy / and content that people will tolerate ads for. They can do what they do, but tried so many stupid things (as in, too high tech that they can't count on ad returns from the eyeballs that come) and now have to downsize.
Google does well, but they are setting themselves up to get knocked off the top by someone who figures out a new way to do search, and a more human-like algorithm to do search results.(No, you Apple retards, it's not going to be something I can talk to. I use computers because I find talking inefficient and annoying. Adding a chick's voice to some app isn't going to cut it.)
*Netvibes, free version lets you make a portal for yourself.
The Evernote app on Android has the permission to read your contacts. No thank you. I downloaded Keep for that reason alone. Plus it's fast and easy to use. So far I like it.
Personally, I keep all my contacts in a dead tree notebook and only ever enter them onto my phone via a special one-time encryption app I had written for me by my handler in Moscow.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Reminds me about a saying regarding engine design. You can design an engine for horsepower or torque. If you design an engine for torque, horsepower will take care of itself. Likewise here, if your business focuses on the customers, the stock price will ultimately take care of itself.
Sadly Crosshair it won't, if you looked at Dell's actual performance they had been doing BETTER than before the downturn for the past 2 years but because they are not a hip trendy company that attracts speculators their stock stayed in the dumps. I'm sure I gave you that video on what is wrong with the stock market, so much money being poured into the system has distorted the market so badly actual performance means nothing anymore, its all about catching the speculators eye with short term jumps.
I mean does anybody REALLY think Apple stock is worth its current price? that when the main products have become saturated and the only thing they have in the pipe is a fricking "iWatch" that they are gonna have another iPad on their hands? of course not but all those speculators that go "Wow Apple devices are expensive so they MUST be good" cause lots of short surges in the stock which cause speculators to herd like lemmings. You just have too much money chasing too little real value so thing gets cock eyed.
But dell is a perfect example of what to do, they ignored the street and had already gotten back up to pre downturn levels. Sales up, costs down, profits up, who in the hell cares what the street thinks if all of that is true about your company? What MSFT SHOULD be doing is taking a page from IBM and offering services and support in addition to the software. Companies don't want to give up XP? Fine if enough companies pay support contracts we'll keep supporting it...BAM! Big influx of money as companies with thousands of XP units would rather pay a support contract than deal with the mess of changing out that many units. People like Win 7 over 8? Fine and dandy, sell them channels for their WMC that let their PC become the center of entertainment by making deals with the big producers..BAM! Another big influx of cash.
Frankly it would not be hard AT ALL to have MSFT making good consistent money right now but because Ballmer is a marketing droid he ONLY cares about what the street thinks while ignoring the fact the speculators will NEVER think of MSFT as a trendy brand, its just not gonna happen. he thinks he can slap a coat of paint and turn Pinto into Porsche and that shit just ain't happening, all he is doing is bleeding customers to the competition.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
More than that, they already tried something exactly like this with Notebook, and it was removed.
Has anyone at Google stopped to think that sometimes, you can't rely solely on word of mouth about your product? It seems every so often, I stumble upon something Google put out a year prior and ask myself, "When did they do this?"
But I didn't use iGoogle, so I didn't speak up....
That was a bit overly dramatic but that's the bottom line, when we're happy with a product, we'll continue to use it and ignore the warning signs about its parent company. It's probably not a good idea but it's the nature of the beast.
Does this
It's hardly FUD when people who've used Google products for years, rightly or wrongly, complain when Google discontinues them. And it's also not FUD when these same people wonder how long the latest Google product lasts.
Does this
Google services are free!
And you get what you pay for, and similarly, you shouldn't trust them or rely on them.
The problem with Google's free services is that they make it difficult for for-pay products to compete with them.
The only way to compete is for people to realize the Google brand is tarnished and untrustworthy. IE, that the free choice might not be the wisest choice for them.
Get it right if you want your payout, Scroogle apologist.
You have zero credibility, AC.