Google Keep note-taking app spotted

[Arizona Hot]

The article had no graphics worth including here.

Google Keep note-taking app spotted  Internet & Media - CNET News

[tomos]

Some screenshots (not much to see really):
http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/03/17/google-keep-is-live-google-launches-a-note-taking-service/

and a good dose of cynicism:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/18/google-keep-spring-cleaning/
"Google Keep’s Already Shaky Ground"

[eleman]

Hahaha 

I had today's laugh. As if I'd sign up for any more google services after the reader debacle.

[IainB]

^ +1 for what @eleman said.

[Deozaan]

And it's back:

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.keep
Web: http://drive.google.com/keep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbvkHEDvw-o

[app103]

Spotted this today:

Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

Seems after Reader, there are many that don't want to try Keep or trust Google not to kill it after they grow to depend on it.

Personally, the way I look at it, they had their chance with Notebook, which they killed and broke a lot of hearts. Doesn't make much sense for them to even release Keep, unless they are looking for another shot at attempting to crush apps like Evernote and Surfulater and put their developers out of business. 

[Jibz]

It could also be that they think they need this type of data to make Google Now more efficient. But I agree, releasing this right after they killed off reader with all the publicity that got, seems counterproductive.

[wraith808]

Spotted this today:

Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

Seems after Reader, there are many that don't want to try Keep or trust Google not to kill it after they grow to depend on it.

Great article- echoes my sentiment.  Makes me want to pay for evernote now.  And I think I will.

And great quote in the article... that echoes my thoughts about Google lately:

Sorry Google, but you might not realize that you are acting like the company you wanted to replace: Microsoft. The Barons of Redmond used to float products into the market — smart displays and weird stuff — that companies like Samsung and LG would put out in the market, only to yank them later. In the end, I stopped believing in Microsoft and shifted my dollars and attention to other brands.

I'm not intentionally trying to yank myself from google.  But I stopped using their search a while ago.  I'm not getting into any new services.  And as they kill more and more, I won't re-up with their next idea. 

Google... killing one customer at a time by attrition.

[xtabber]

This sounds a lot like the complaints heard in these precincts some years ago, after Evernote deep sixed its much beloved stand-alone version (2.2) and forced its users into the cloud, whether they liked it or not.

I only looked at Google Keep for a few minutes late last night, but at first glance, it's a lot more like the original Evernote (or Cintanotes) than what Evernote has evolved into.  I find that I hardly ever use Evernote any more. It's just too busy for quick note taking and not capable enough for serious content organization.

Keep looks promising and I may or may not end up using it, but one thing I would never do is put all my eggs in ANY tech company's basket.

[app103]

I only looked at Google Keep for a few minutes late last night, but at first glance, it's a lot more like the original Evernote (or Cintanotes) than what Evernote has evolved into.  I find that I hardly ever use Evernote any more. It's just too busy for quick note taking and not capable enough for serious content organization.

I use a combo of Surfulater for web captures and more serious note taking... and Notezilla for quick, small notes (and other stuff).

Both of these apps are on my must-have list.

I might have considered Google Notebook as a replacement for Surfulater, but Google killed it right around the time I was thinking about it. I have no plans on falling for that again.

[Arizona Hot]

Evernote 4.5 came with my Win7 computer. Is it cloud-based?

[TaoPhoenix]

Well, on the topic of all eggs, it might be useful to separate "the eggs" into categories, and then compare the baskets separately. For various reasons, starting with inertia and then keeping Google at bay, I have used Yahoo Mail for some 8 years now and been mostly satisfied. Yahoo hasn't hit my radar for doing anything particularly evil for ages, so that front seems okay.

Search is of course where Google made their money, but I only use Google when Startpage doesn't give me the best answers. While a bit grumpily, I have an iPhone and not an Android phone, so that's that dept. Then it seems to me that Google's value drops rather steeply off a cliff. I am quite unimpressed by Google Docs, and soon after that I'm hard pressed to even name many more Google offerings.

But just looking at the Reader mess, it seems that one is starting to change a gestalt - that we didn't mind if Google saved a few bucks killing off Wave, or some of those other things. But nuking Reader seems to be a bit of a risky play alienating the "small but important" audience of the skilled tech users. That time it "became personal", and the distrust spread beyond "a product" into casting all future offerings into a distasteful context.

The Tech landscape feels like it's starting to drift a little. It seems that a certain suite of core items has settled into incumbent positions, and while there will always be maneuvering, I don't see what the next blinding new entry is.

[40hz]

^ +1 for what @eleman said.

Agree.

I'm no longer interested in using Google for anything that involves hosted data storage in any way shape or form.

"Burn me once - shame on you. Burn me twice - shame on me." 

[IainB]

^ +1 for what @eleman said.

Agree.
I'm no longer interested in using Google for anything that involves hosted data storage in any way shape or form.
"Burn me once - shame on you. Burn me twice - shame on me."  

...but one thing I would never do is put all my eggs in ANY tech company's basket.

^ Yes, eggsactly.

[IainB]

...Google... killing one customer at a time by attrition.

Not really. It would probably be  more accurate to describe it as:

Killing hundreds of thousands of customers en masse

- with actions such as these.

[IainB]

This sounds a lot like the complaints heard in these precincts some years ago, after Evernote deep sixed its much beloved stand-alone version (2.2) and forced its users into the cloud, whether they liked it or not...

Yes, that sort of duress/blackmail/coercion is precisely why I shall never use Evernote again, and is a substantive reason that I advise clients of (when recommending that the service is best avoided). If a vendor can take that path with users once, then they can be expected to take it again. The lesson in this is that, from a marketing perspective, this sort of word-of-mouth negative publicity is one of the worst things that any product vendor might wish to create, but create it they did. It's not like it is a new lesson to learn, either.

...Personally, the way I look at it, they had their chance with Notebook, which they killed and broke a lot of hearts.

Yes. I take a very pragmatic view of software and services. If it's useful/reliable, then it's great, but if it's not useful/reliable, then it is to be avoided. The only thing that I found tolerable about Google killing off Notebook was that Notebook was too kludgy to be of any real use to me, so it was a relatively minor annoyance for me when Google killed it, though I did resent the fact that I had invested quite a bit of my own time into experimental use of the product - was time that I would definitely not have invested had I suspected that it was just some kind of a punt product by Google and that they did not intend to support/develop it.

Having become both weary and wary of Google, from the Notebook and other product killings, my perspective of Buzz and WAVE was that they they seemed to be BS from the start and destined to be abortive attempts to invent a Thneed, and their specific usefulness was in any event limited from the start - so their demise was probably to be expected, and I was not bothered by them being killed off by Google. By that time I had become too cautious to invest them with my time. Incidentally, my perspective of Google's g+ is much the same and I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.

In the case of Google Reader however, I did invest it with my time and the decision to kill the product has seriously discombobulated me. GR was the second most useful product to me after Gmail - in which I have also invested a lot of my time. Furthermore, I had recommended to clients that both services be regarded as sound and useful for business purposes.

That's all changed now, of course, following the killing-off of Google Reader.  By its own actions, Google has effectively nailed its true and new colours to the mast for us all to see. I would never recommend Google products/services to a friend or a client without a serious caveat emptor from hereon.
As I said above regarding Evernote:

The lesson in this is that, from a marketing perspective, this sort of word-of-mouth negative publicity is one of the worst things that any product vendor might wish to create, but create it they did. It's not like it is a new lesson to learn, either.

The Google Keep product - if it ever materialises, by whatever name and in whatever form - thus probably has the potential to be dead in the water at the outset, due to Google's inexplicable and seemingly wrong-footed marketing strategy. This could also have an adverse run-on effect to other, new/test products from Google. Trust is an incredibly important factor in marketing, and Google corp. would seem to have blown it. Various similar examples (e.g., including Evernote and Microsoft) are indicative of the truth that this sort of breach of trust can take a l-o-n-g time to repair.