Google Keep, a New Service for Taking Notes

http://googlesystem.blogspot.in/2013/03/google-keep-new-service-for-taking-notes.html?m=1

by denzil_correa • 13 years ago

36 55 13 years ago

googlesystem.blogspot.in

fusiongyro3• 13 years ago

It will be interesting to see if uptake is diminished by their recent shutdown of Reader. It's hard to feel unwary of new Google services that don't smell like something 90% of folks will use.

breakall• 13 years ago

Agreed, I look forward to the "Top 5 replacements for Google Keep" stories on Lifehacker, etc. in a few months/years.

xutopia• 13 years ago

Google Reader is one of those tools that is hard to replace. I'm trying out alternatives but they all feel odd to me. I really liked hitting space to jump from one story to the next too. Keyboard navigation was really good in GReader.

whatgoodisaroad• 13 years ago

I agree, but I'm finding j/k navigation works in all of the GR alternatives.

kdude632• 13 years ago

There's no 'if' about it. Everyone still is, and will be pissed at Google for quite a while.

niggler• 13 years ago

you dont see a mass exodus from gmail ...

mkr-hn4• 13 years ago

They had "Google Keep." It was called Google Notebook, and they killed it without warning. I would be interested in hearing the motivations of anyone who gives this application a serious try.

And I mean that. Maybe they've got some useful insight that allows for the possibility that this will be different.

andyl• 13 years ago

How long before Google discontinues the service? I'll stick with EverNote.

grimman• 13 years ago

Yeah... if they can't make money off of Reader, how will they ever make money with a product like this? Thanks, but I'm good too.

hrayr• 13 years ago

Nothing in this world is forever. Get over it, you'll be happier. Take advantage of what's new and innovative, stop living in the past. It takes less than a minute to transfer your Google reader content over to the two dozen or so, very capable, replacements that are more than eager to take you on. If Google note decides to shut down in a decade, be assured that your content will be with you no matter where you decide to go next. There will certainly be many more, perhaps even more innovative and capable replacements at the time.

While it's nice to not have to migrate your content every decade or so (Google Reader was introduced 8 years ago), it's certainly not that painful. As apps and services evolve at blistering pace, I love the fact that we can get some fresh air, and a wave of new innovations. I hope more companies do what Google does, discontinue products, for whatever reason, and give others a chance to grow.

skilesare• 13 years ago

This is not true. History does not come with your Reader export. Old archived stories will be lost forever.

bengillies3• 13 years ago

The difficulty is not in migrating to a new service when the old one dies; it's in transferring all your old data across to the new one and updating all your other tools that reference it.

With Reader, (apart from historical read/unread/starred/etc) this is as simple as downloading an OPML file and uploading it somewhere else.

With Gmail, it's more tricky. Migrating emails is fairly trivial, migrating the address itself though (unless you own the domain) involves updating all your contacts and changing your settings for every site you use on the internet (auto mail forwarding of course makes this easier).

With Notes, I'm not sure there's a standardised format for exporting/importing from one service to another. Certainly, with different features between each product a lot of information would be lost when doing so.

If you're fine with that and/or don't keep really important notes in the service then it's not really an issue. If you want to ensure they stick around as long as possible, then you need to pick a service that is committed, or one that you control yourself.

pppp• 13 years ago

Yeah, I have a sudden mistrust of anything Google creates after they fked us with Reader.

lawdawg3• 13 years ago

Reader lasted longer than almost all of the (major) RSS readers combined. What makes you think EverNote is going to be around forever?

Honestly, I don't understand the stance of using an inferior product (this assumes you believe Keep will be superior to EverNote, if not, then why even comment?) because you fear the superior one will be shut off. I rather use a product from a company that has a history of providing mechanisms to take out my data if/when they shut the product down instead of a startup/small company that will probably lose all my data when they go bankrupt or get acqui-hired.

joering2• 13 years ago

> What makes you think EverNote is going to be around forever?

Because 99.99999% of EverNote's revenue does not come from some other part of business?

One thing is for sure: most users that did use Reader will skip this one :)

ryanhuff• 13 years ago

The issue for many people is that these ancillary services from Google may be found to not add value to Google's overall G+ strategy, and killed in the interest of staying "focused". Google is simply not "all-in" with some of these services. This just isn't the case for company's like Evernote.

Tyrannosaurs2• 13 years ago

It's the old pig and chicken metaphor - Evernote is committed to note taking, Google, it's not so clear.

Obviously both might end up dropping it for one reason or another, it just feels like Evernote are likely to fight harder to stay in this market and to keep me happy.

fusiongyro3• 13 years ago

There's no reasonable way to estimate how likely Evernote is to fail or be acqui-hired, but we can reasonably estimate how long an unpopular, non-core, free Google offering will last. All other things being equal, avoiding the Google offering is at least avoiding the devil we know. The success of the Reader replacements also suggests that there are business opportunities in simply being the alternative that exists when Google pulls the plug, so I would not expect Evernote to react to this news all that fearfully.

Of course we should still choose products based on their positive qualities and the freedom to use our data as we wish is an important one.

mark_l_watson• 13 years ago

+1 For $50/year I feel like Evernote is focused on me as a customer.

I just blogged about this: Google has cancelled 5 services that I used for work projects. I have just switched to using my own domain email as primary, moving my blog from Blogger to one of my own servers (Wordpress is actually pretty cool), and I am using Dropbox as my primary photo and music repository (now using Google's and Apple's services as just backups).

I really like being a paying customer for services that are important to me. I like Google's, Facebook's, and Twitter's free offerings, but I use them without depending on them.

I wonder different Google's, Facebook's, and Twitter's businesses would be if they had a modest fee (like $25/year) for users, and made users customers instead of products?

WalterSear2• 13 years ago

Reader wasn't killed because it couldn't generate revenue. Reader was killed because someone at Google thought they could make everyone use plus instead.

erikj• 13 years ago

I'm not sure if I want to touch any non-core (Search, YouTube, Gmail) Google's services after the discontinuation of Reader.

random42• 13 years ago

The thing is, a few weeks back Reader could be considered core Google offerings.

kdude632• 13 years ago

Which is exactly why Google lost everyone's trust.

lucb1e2• 13 years ago

Not as core as Search or YouTube though...

lawdawg3• 13 years ago

Is this a joke? A product with less than 1-2 million active users can't honestly be considered a "core Google offering".

sethist2• 13 years ago

Anyone who would say that hasn't been paying attention. Not only had innovation on Reader slowed to a halt, but Google was also working on and prioritizing products that competed with it (G+). There is a reason why Feedly was able to move so quickly on replacing the Google Reader API, they were anticipating the shutdown of Reader for a while.

Groxx• 13 years ago

How so? RSS is definitely niche (especially when compared to those three), and I don't see how they would be making money off it, except via ads - turning off AdBlock, I don't see any.

cygwin98• 13 years ago

No way I'll give it a try. Bit by Google Notebook a few years ago.

lylejohnson• 13 years ago

To be clear (for those of us who don't always click through and actually read the articles), this isn't any sort of announcement from Google --- it's just the results of some sleuthing that hint at a future note-taking service.

Achshar• 13 years ago

It's more than a hint. The service was active on Google for some time a few hours ago and then was pulled down again. It definitely exists, not a matter of 'if' but a matter of 'when'.

shoopy• 13 years ago

This is some awesome commentary here.

Nobody even read the goddamn article. Bunch of parrots.

alexholehouse• 13 years ago

Phil Libin's long term plan for Evernote[1] is precisely what this sort of application requires, and is at total odds with Google's product release/discontinue approach.

Google Notebook was "discontinued" only a few years ago - and the kinds of consumers who would be interested Keep almost certainly share a significant overlap with those who two years ago were interested/used Notebook, and therefore have literally been bitten by Google in this exact space in the last few years.

[1] http://vator.tv/news/2013-01-17-phil-libin-on-an-evernote-ip...

T_T• 13 years ago

While I think this is an interesting point, at the same time, it looks like it may have been more difficult technically and brand-wise for google to migrate notebook to drive (which I think is the goal). It probably made more sense for them to discontinue notebook, which had a relatively small userbase, and relaunch it as a new product/brand under the drive suite.

sciwiz• 13 years ago

This was live for a little bit last night. Here are some screenshots: http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/03/17/google-keep-is-live-...

bengillies3• 13 years ago

To stay actually on topic for once, if these screenshots are anything to go by, Google Keep looks pretty bare bones and not really suitable as a replacement for anything bar the most simple use case (of course, a couple of screenshots does not a product make).

Semaphor• 13 years ago

Screenshots from Androidpolice they took while Keep was up for a short time: http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/03/17/google-keep-is-live-...

elchief• 13 years ago

Sorry google but you can fuck off this week.

Tyrannosaurs2• 13 years ago

All the "how long will it last" sentiment aside, this looks like a great move for Android - lists, notes and other basically structured data, synced across your mobile devices which Google can provide on Android devices out of the box if they want.

If they did do that it would also makes it less likely they'll pull it at some point in the future. Bundle it with Android and you're going to hit hundreds of millions of users very quickly. Even Google don't pull back from that sort of thing without thinking.

ben_pr• 13 years ago

This is a hard one. I'm a geek that loves to try new gadgets/websites and when I find one I like I use it a lot, like Google Reader for example. The problem with Google is I may get attached to one of their products and then a year or two down the road they pull the plug on it. It's happened enough times now that I don't even care to try Google products until it becomes as big as gmail and I'm sure it wont just vanish. Anyways plenty of other good services for taking notes that I can pay for and I'm sure they will be around for a long time.

lucb1e2• 13 years ago

The most interesting about this is not that Google is building a new service, but how everyone responds to it. All trust seems to be entirely gone among most hackers around here.

pilif• 13 years ago

Irony explained using an analogy:

A new experimental product by Google with a dubious monetization strategy at best has the name "Keep".

Google Keep, a New Service for Taking Notes

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