I used Google Notebook fairly heavily, but they discontinued it. I love (and pay for) Evernote now, which has lots of great integrations with other products. Why would I trust Google again?
> I used Google Notebook fairly heavily, but they discontinued it. I love (and pay for) Evernote now, which has lots of great integrations with other products. Why would I trust Google again?
Given that you need a Google Account to use this, and it is a new component of Google Drive, I don't think its really about winning back people who have rage-quit Google over the discontinuation of Google Notebook (or Google Reader, for that matter.)
I read the grandparent comment as more of a "We don't trust you, therefore we won't invest in your new service, therefore you won't get the use out of it you expect, therefore you will kill it, and the prophecy is fulfilled."
Google is doing something which I didn't think was possible, which is to teach a vast marketplace that "free" isn't real.
I've had the conversation with lots of people about how free services are unsustainable because they incur real costs, and like a ponzi scheme you run out of suckers eventually who are willing to put in new money. And yet if you're collecting new users then there is some "value" there. But like shale oil of old, if you can't convert the 'value' into cash to fund operations, its not worth anything.
Google is in a unique position to train the billions of Internet users that you want something, you pay for it, if you aren't paying for it, it goes away at any time. So when the person running the 'free' service says 'time to pay up' you don't complain, you either pay or do without.
That was an impossible conversation to have during Web 1.0, it's being forced on Web 2.0, and I expect will be the foundation of Web 3.0.
There are lots of free services that are sustainable, because the cost of delivering them is less than the amount they earn through advertising or premium users. There's no ponzi scheme aspect to that. (Google Search, Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
Even if you're paying for something, it can still go away. There have been lots of paid services that failed, both online and offline. (Kozmo.com, Saab, Webvan, Hostess, etc)
There are sustainable free services, and there are unsustainable paid services, and often companies don't know what category a product falls into until years after it's been released.
Evernote has taken hundreds of millions in funding over the course of five years. How they going to justify that investment with some portion of their 11 million users paying $45/year? Are they going to sell? If they sell, will the service survive?
It is a pretty high proportion though (>1M) and the user base is incredibly loyal. Combine with the lock in effect, lack of decent competition and opportunities into enterprise market and you have recipes for a bright future.
And there is no evidence of them selling. It is just FUD.
Putting aside snarky sentiments about its inevitable shutdown: pretty neat, although as others have stated, it seems a little too minimal. I imagine if your life is already on Drive that this could be pretty useful. I especially like the Android lock screen widget that lets you add stuff directly from the phone (mentioned on their blog)
Regardless of the product you use, searchable cloud-synced notes that you can quickly access are a life changer, even if they're just text files. It's like direct memory augmentation; I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to have it. "The weakest ink is better than the strongest memory" and all that. The trick is to make a workflow for yourself that allows for writing stuff down now and finding/organizing it later. I find OneNote + SkyDrive works pretty well - it ties you to the proprietary OneNote format, but the features you get from it are powerful, and as long as you have the client software and a place to put the files (preferably on the web), no one can "shut the service down". Perhaps I'll give this one a try though.
You can bet that they will release an iOS app in the coming weeks. As for people on Android 2.x, buy a new phone or yell at your phone manufacturer for not upgrading you to 4.x.
Android 4.x brought some pretty massive changes to APIs and behavior that it is not worth Google's time to continue to support it. They would rather try and push as many people as they can to 4.x.
Warren Ellis:
Dear Google: why launch Google Keep when you've just proven you'll shut off productivity services when you get bored with maintaining them?
I'd thought of building something like this for my own use last autumn, and ironically actually started building it over the weekend[1] (GF away for the week).
When I was young and naive, reading that one of the big boys was getting into the space where I'd just started a project would have scared me off and I'd have abandoned it. In recent, more clued-up years I'd have thought "ah, market validation!" and ramped up my development effort. Now, in the light of the Reader abandonment, it's more like a feeling of joy that Google will educate the world about how great an idea this is, and then abandon it just about when I have something that other people might actually want to use.
> Now, in the light of the Reader abandonment, it's more like a feeling of joy that Google will educate the world about how great an idea this is, and then abandon it just about when I have something that other people might actually want to use.
Drive, while also available for free, part of the core of the paid Google Apps offering, and its (as the parallel to OneNote) a key part of Google Apps being an alternative to Microsoft Office (and, consequently, to ChromeOS with Google Apps being an alternative to Windows with Microsoft Office).
Its hardly positioned similarly to Reader which, however popular it may have been with a segment that is overrepresented among active participants of online forums focussed on technology, was pretty distant from any core strategic focus for Google.
So, I wouldn't bank on Google canceling this any time soon (or even in 8 years, as happened with Reader.)
You may be right -- possibly I'm overcompensating for my earlier worries. Still, if the worst comes to the worst it'll still be an interesting project.
Indeed. Though now that I've realised it's unlikely to make me my millions, I think I'll write it using Angular, Node, CoffeeScript, MongoDB, and possibly Haskell.
This is exactly what I'm realizing with my self-driving trash can: Google's self-driving car team are just a few guys who can code, and some sensors, processors, and servos attached to a car. (And since it's Google, a TON of code written by those few guys)
What, I can't do the same with an RC car chassis and a handful of Arduinos?
Why would it matter if they shut it down? With Google Takeout[1] Google has proven to be be pretty good about making sure users can move their data out of Google's services.
So you use Keep it ends up being good[2], but then 1 year from now Google announces it'll be shut down. Oh no! I guess I just have to download all my data from Keep and upload it to Evernote.
I understand people (although seemingly more people than actually used the product) are upset about Reader, and justifiably so, but I think it's a little hyperbolic to evaluate every new Google product in that light.
I tried it, didn't like it and moved on to a newsreader I liked better. The only explanation I can come up with for all the emotion is that these people have abandonment issues.
I've been pretty happy with Feedreader for the past year, except the built in web browser control on Windows is pretty lame -- not Feedreader's fault, but Windows - so I open up with a double click to Chrome when I want to view the original.
> Warren Ellis: Dear Google: why launch Google Keep when you've just proven you'll shut off productivity services when you get bored with maintaining them?
It probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense to assume that services introduced after Google announced that they were going to start trimming old offerings that didn't warrant support and increase the focus on what they do introduce are likely to be closed just because Google is closing services introduced before that effort was announced.
The whole point of that effort is to kill the existing zombie offerings and stop creating new ones.
For this product, I'm more concerned about integration with iOS devices. I love being able to access evernote on my iPad and iPhone. I doubt that Apple will allow lots of iOS integration with anything having to do with Google Drive/anything that helps Android's cause.
Evernote is completely dependent on it's product to survive, so they won't kill it unless they're going out of business. Same with One Note and Office, Microsoft makes billions out of Office every quarter.
Google Drive is pretty much subsidized from Adsense profits just like Google Notebook was.
They actually have a fairly large number of enterprise users. In any case, I think the parent's point was that even if Google did eventually shut it down, it's a todo list so it shouldn't be that hard to replace.
The product itself can easily be replaced, but the pain of researching the best alternative, installing new browser extensions, new mobile apps, and changing your workflow is a pain in itself.
If you're super averse to switching costs, I don't imagine you'd ever switch to Google Keep from whatever you're using now in the first place. So surely that's not a major concern for the set of people that are actually considering switching?
Google Notebook was filled with flaws. I used it quite a bit for a large number of subjects, but once the news came out it was getting the axe, I migrated over to another platform (there were plenty available and easily located) and that was that.
If people don't want to deal with that hassle then stay using what you have. I use Evernote right now, have it synced across multiple computers and two mobile devices. I may switch to Keep, I may not - but the whole Google Notebook being shut down isn't going to deter me from using a future Google Service.
If Google Keep ends up being a lackluster service then I should expect it to go away. Hopefully it won't, however from my experiences with Notebook, I'm extremely confident that even if it does, I won't lose any data.
Evernote is a very successful company with a successful business model and whilst I don't expect them to outlast humanity I do expect at least a few years.
Google has a well established record now for abandoning projects. Especially those that are free.
Let's get some perspective here: Google Reader ran for 8 years, far outlasting the majority of Web sites and Apps launched in that time. Evernote has only been around since 2008, where will it be in its 8th year of life? What happens if Apple builds a really great Evernote competitor into Siri?
With the attitude expressed in the comments here, one should never ever use any startup's new product, because 99% of them will fail, and they probably won't have anything like Google Takeout to help you migrate before they are shutdown.
There's a difference between "use" and "rely on," and I think one would have to be a fool to not factor in a startup's viability (as best as possible) when deciding whether or not to integrate its product into one's workflow. If you use dropbox, do you use it the same way now as you did when it was in beta? Or do you trust it more now? If you don't use dropbox, I'm sure you can think of similar examples that make the same point.
For various reasons (that have nothing to do with their viability as a company) I don't use Evernote and didn't use reader and I'm not going to use keep. But I think it's fair to consider google's track record with similar products over the last decade when debating whether or not to use keep.
Reader is viewed as standalone now. IIRC it was introduced pretty soon after google accounts were and not long after gmail itself, and I remember thinking about it as part of a nebulous "google account package." Now obviously in hindsight I was wrong, but to act as though it is obvious now that "keep" is going to be around and updated for a long time is absurd. All of these products: reader, wave, buzz, notebooks, alerts, feedburner; looked like they'd be around and supported for a while when they were introduced.
I don's see how monetized vs. non-monetized is a relevant issue, unless I am completely off in how much of google's revenue comes from advertising. Google search is just as free as reader was and was just as non-monetized at first. I don't think that a significant percent of google's revenues come from Drive, but if you have contradictory data I'll concede the point that Drive is likely to be around in some form. That still doesn't prevent them from introducing and removing features of google drive; features like Keep.
Edit (forgot one thing): the other point illustrated by reader is that google is more focused than it was 8 years ago. I can't imagine a product like reader lasting 8 years if it were introduced today.
> Edit (forgot one thing): the other point illustrated by reader is that google is more focused than it was 8 years ago. I can't imagine a product like reader lasting 8 years if it were introduced today.
I can't see a product like Reader (in terms of its weak connection to any coherent long-term Google strategy, not its primary features) being released by Google today. Which is, incidentally, just another way of saying that cancellation of products that originated before Google's "more wood behind fewer arrows" focus isn't really a good yardstick for Google's commitment to products released under that new regime, for reasons which should be pretty obvious.
I'm not sure if I agree, but that's a fair point. But, again, it wasn't obvious 8 years ago that reader wasn't part of google's long-term strategy. They had gmail, blogger, sites, picasa, etc; all of which could be part of an "open-web" strategy that they've since moved away from.
> Google has a well established record now for abandoning projects.
Google has a well-established record for closing services that were introduced before they announced that they would be closing services that were languishing and working to stop introducing services that would languish that way.
I'm not sure how that warrants suspicion about closing directed at services introduced after that focus was announced.
I'm also looking to support some file syncing services in my new iOS/Mac app and as technically interesting as Google Drive SDK looks I think I can trust Dropbox a lot more.
Google is scary. Soon Google will achieve semi monopoly in its ability to develop certain kinds of advanced machine learning / AI and analyze human behavior, due to exclusive access to vast amounts of data. I would prefer crucial advances in these disciplines to be described in detail in publicly available papers, with open implementation, by academic researchers, rather than outlined in announcement and mostly closed/proprietary, for the benefit of shareholders.
Evernote-like data is certainly a good addition. Google Glass is even scarier -- the ultimate tool for behavior analysis.
I facepalmed when I saw that Google omitted a feature that they also left out of Tasks, even though this application clearly has a lot more energy and drive behind it - labeling / tagging.
It's such a simple, unobtrusive, and elegant feature that there really isn't an excuse to exclude it, given the enormous benefits it adds to any kind of note-taking or organization application. It instantly allows the user to implement any kind of organization system, from haphazard brain-dumping all the way up to GTD.
And it doesn't take a lot. You don't even have to clutter up your pristine, trendy flat UI with labels displayed over everything - just allow the user to 1) Add any number of labels to a note (They don't even have to be displayed anywhere, except maybe an out-of-the-way Labels dialog) 2) Filter the list of notes based on one label. That's all! That's not so bad, is it?
This is also the one, single feature that could have allowed this to immediately and effectively compete with Evernote.
Where does the countdown start? At nearly 8 years, which is the lifespan of Google Reader? How many other free services on the web lasted that long [1]?
I'm an avid Reader user. I'm terribly sad to see it go, but I appreciate the value I've gotten out of it while it existed.
Plenty of web services -- maybe most -- die after a while. Maybe the company offering it goes under, maybe nobody uses it, or maybe it's just not accomplishing the goals the company set out for it (ahem, Reader). In any case, 8 years _has_ to be higher than the average lifespan [1]. So I assert that even if you assume every new Google service will be killed in 8 years, you're still better off choosing them (from a longevity perspective).
[1] I would absolutely _love_ to see some data about average web service lifespans. I suspect that it is actually quite low. I also suspect that Google has a much better track record than the industry (again, on average).
I'm very surprised that they rolled this out without the "sharing" features baked into Google Drive already. You can publish the contents of a spreadsheet, but you can't get at these notes. I know the announcement says a feature like this is coming in a few weeks, but why didn't they just withhold the launch until it's more mature? I mean, who is going to early adopt something so crippled? There seems to be such a lack of focus from Google lately, and I'm not trying to hop on the bandwagon. But they could have rolled this out with the share features already found in Google Drive.
This is extremely minimal, I'd honestly expect more from a Google product. There's not even a tutorial or anything. Also why are there not any text formatting options? I'd love a real Google Evernote competitor but this is not even in the same league. Am I missing something, or is this just neutered Google Drive?
Lots of people, including myself, feel that Evernote is overly complex and not enjoyable to use. I've always wanted a simple app that lets me sync basic text notes across devices. All the ones I've been able to find have something off about them, whether it be interface, lack of sync, complexity, or other annoyance. I find Keep to actually be quite nice, and it fits my needs. I assume there are others for whom this is also true.
Edit: I guess you could say Google's Evernote competitor is just Google Drive itself. If you want text formatting, create an actual Doc. Keep seems to be explicitly for short-form, simple note taking. I think there's a large market for that.
The facts are that Evernote has in excess of 30M users, with lots of paying users and growing rapidly. There is no evidence that this mythical complexity is affecting adoption.
And I don't see how Google Drive and Evernote are competition. Very different use cases.
Who are you even talking to? The post you replied to just made an argument for why this would be a viable product for some people, which is exactly what the topmost post asked for opinions on.
The only possible phrase that could be construed as needing "data" to back it up is "lots of people" being unsatisfied with evernote's complexity (which is not a statement about that affecting evernote's adoption, incidentally), and it's a statement that could arguably be satisfied with an anecdote in any case.
You pulled the trigger on the negativity gun a little early here, even for you.
That's why I said "I assume." Also, Evernote being successful does not actually counter my point. That people are using it and that it's growing does not mean there isn't a separate or overlapping set of users who want something simpler.
30M is a fraction of the total mobile phone users. I could argue that it's possible that Evernote could get 100 million users if it's more more simple.
> This is extremely minimal, I'd honestly expect more from a Google product.
Given the fact that they are saying access from the Drive UI is coming soon, I suspect the release was rushed after the accidental leak. I wouldn't expect them to release a new Drive app when that requires a separate URL before its integrated into the Drive UI.
OTOH, its not unheard of for Google to introduce a new service in a fairly minimal form and rapidly add features once it is deployed. So, that could be the plan (and, of course, both could be true -- this could be an ahead-of-schedule, and less-complete-than-planned deployment of something that was planned to be released in what would have been a fairly minimal form anyway.)
Last sentence: "You can access, edit and create new notes on the web at http://drive.google.com/keep and in the coming weeks you'll be able to do the same directly from Google Drive."
Referring to something as minimal doesn't seem like a knock on the product. It's not just startups that follow lean methodologies. Google can create a minimal viable product too. In fact, this is exactly what they should do. Feature bloated products are terrible ways to launch.
After spending a few minutes using the product, I have to agree. It's a very minimal product, but it has extremely poor usability considering it's lack of options. I was only commenting on the expectation for more than a minimal product from Google.
"This is extremely minimal, I'd honestly expect more from a Google product."
Off-topic, but does anyone remember the time when Google's UI consisted of just a textbox with their logo on a plain web page? And how they were getting tonnes of praise for that?
It's nice but I expected more from Google. If a new startup launched this product it wouldn't get any press. Why should I use this when there are already similar options (Simple Note) and ones which have many more features (Evernote)?
They killed Google Notebook a couple years ago. I don't know why I should trust this one. Pretty ballsy to call it "keep", bloggers can start drafting their "Google Loses Keep" headlines now.
The product wasn't great. I used it quite extensively (I didn't know of any other services) and it was filled with problems with layouts and pasting with styles.
While I wasn't thrilled to see it go, it shouldn't have been that huge of a shock to anyone. If anything, the best features from Google Notebook have made their way into Google Drive.
You should trust them as long as the people behind this app are working for Google. It is apparently obvious that Google as a company stays above its products and people. When people leave, the product pretty much goes with them. Unless of course you have built a cash cow like Gmail or other Ads generating mechanism. Also exempt are your Glasses, self-driving cars and etc.
Well, my reference is to post-Kinect world of Microsoft in particular and the world at large in general. It seems every other big IT corporation is looking to keep one or two of their larger-than-life futuristic product at the top of the shelf as sort of a promise to the humanity. So there is no chance that they will let go of those inventions so easily so soon. The rest of the tiny everyday products, well, you have Google Webstore for those where millions of others are keeping company.
I'd love to know how you posted that comment, then.
Because if you've stopped using anything from Google because they ditched Reader, presumably you've also sworn off all Microsoft products (they killed Clippy!), anything from Apple (R.I.P. QuickDraw 3D), Ubuntu (oh Gnome2, how I loved thee)...
And you won't be using any internet provider since they ditched gopher, or dial-up over the phone service because the bastards discontinued telex.
Or maybe you could admit that you're over-reacting slightly?
I suppose that would make follow if you interpreted my comment in the most uncharitable way.
Microsoft used to be known for bending over backwards to maintain "backwards' compatibility. Or used to be... I am in the process of moving away from MS. They still don't kill products with millions of active users for political reasons (http://macsparky.com/blog/2013/3/the-rss-apocalypse) as far as I know.
But I was really referencing that I have no longer have any more desire to depend on a free product (i.e. where I "am the product"), and put myself at the mercy Google's increasing fickleness over what constitutes a viable following.
It looks to me like they're just obfuscated words. If you look at one of the hierarchies, you see "TUdKmf-xhiy4-haAclf", then "TUdKmf-xhiy4-DKlKme-haAclf", then "TUdKmf-xhiy4". Seems like they're just taking a normal class like "note-body-wrapper" and "note-body" and obfuscating it.
