Earlier today, Google launched Google Keep, a cloud-based note taking service designed to help people keep track of their thoughts, scribbles and notes. It’s an obvious smack at the popular Evernote service.
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.
(See also: Google Wants To Drive Your Collaborative Apps Home – And Into Its Fold)
Like Evernote, Keep presents notes in either a list view or a grid view, and syncs them to the cloud. They’re then accessible over the Web and via an app. The Google Keep app, however, is currently available on Android only. Evernote is available on iOS, Android, Mac, the Web and other platforms.
With the app, users can add notes via text, speech, in list form, and via the smartphone’s camera. The app also supports a screen widget (for Android 4.2+) so users can add notes without unlocking their device (see image below supplied by Google):
Notes are synced and stored in the user’s Google Drive. Google has said that users can now access, edit and create notes on the Web, although at press time, the web service repeatedly failed. According to today’s announcement, “in the coming weeks” users will also be able to access and create their notes directly from within Google Drive.
Google Keep is obviously similar to Evernote, the popular note-taking app. It will be interesting to monitor the popularity of the Google Keep service as it launches only days after Google killed its popular Google Reader service.
Will users trust Google to manage their notes and thoughts for as long as they want them? Danny Sullivan, writing at Marketing Land, suggests that Google Keep is more a threat to Apple than Evernote:
One thing the service does is immediately help bring Android up to the useful functionality that Apple offers with its own Notes service. With Apple, Notes work across iOS devices, as well as Macs and are available on the web. Android has lacked such a native feature, until now.
Lead image screencapped from Google Keep video
