Just two short days after being leaked, Google's note taking service dubbed "Google Keep" became official. Keep is certainly a no-frills service, but that doesn't mean it isn't useless. Whether you enjoy typing or talking more, Keep can keep up. So far, in my tests, the voice transcription has been incredibly accurate, so I can see myself using that feature most often while driving, as it also keeps the voice recording just in case the transcription is a little off. The other options you have are check boxes, handy if you use Keep as a to-do list; and an option to save a photo.
If any of this sounds at all familiar, that's because it is. Keep is Google's answer to Evernote. Getting current users to switch from Evernote will be next to impossible due to the fact that Evernote has over 34 million users and a four and a half year head start. Of course, Google may have snagged a few extra users right off the bat if they announced Keep in the wake of the Evernote security breach a few weeks back.
Google Keep may be a great product, but I don't think it will pull in the users that the big G is hoping for. Yes, mainly for Evernote and it's companion apps (Skitch, Evernote Food, and Evernote Hello), but more recently because some users are unsure whether or not the service will stay around. With Evernote, that is their sole business. If the service dies, the business dies. With Google, the service dies whenever they want it to die. Many users are still reeling from the death of Google Reader, myself included. Gigaom founder, Om Malik, said it best in his article on Gigaom.com:
"I spent about seven years of my online life on that service. I sent feedback, used it to annotate information and they killed it like a butcher slaughters a chicken. No conversation — dead. The service that drives more traffic than Google+ was sacrificed because it didn’t meet some vague corporate goals; users — many of them life long — be damned."As for myself, I'll use Keep. I'll use it about as often as I use Evernote which, considering I have 18 notes since joining in October of 2009, it won't be often. But who knows! Maybe Google Keep will be handy enough and simple enough that I'll start using it more!
On the other hand...... nah, probably not. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go get some coffee.
