
Google Keep - mstolpm
https://keep.google.com/
======
DCKing
Discussions from last year:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5410267](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5410267)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5410071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5410071)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5395147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5395147)

I've been a user for a year now, and nothing has changed about the service
except minor tweaks.

~~~
crosvenir
Last year?! It's been out for how long? :( I really like it so far and have
been wanting something like it for quite a while (I've been using plain text
files in dropbox). I feel so... behind or something.

~~~
aqzman
It launched to the public on March 20th, 2013. There are official apps for
Android and iOS. I can't speak for the iOS app as I haven't used it, but the
Android app is very nice.

~~~
wastedhours
With it being pre-installed on KitKat I just used it without thinking about
whether it was "out" there yet. Great service that I use every day. You can
even set each note with a reminder time or location that'll notify you (on
phone and Wear) to, well, remind you of it. Great for things you remember at
work but need for home etc...

------
jgrahamc
Meanwhile at Google HQ.

Googler #1: "We've managed to capture everyone's video watching habits, email,
activities via Calendar, audio and video calls, browsing habits, what they're
looking at via Glass, and where they are via Maps. But there's a major hole in
our knowledge: we don't know what people are thinking".

Googler #2: "Let's get people to tell us. We'll call it Keep and give it the
tag line: 'Google Keep lets you quickly capture what’s on your mind.'"

~~~
baldfat
Here is my opposition:

Google tells us they keep the data. Everyone especially your ISP and
government is capable of MUCH more private information.

~~~
dmux
The lesser of two evils is still evil.

~~~
baldfat
This isn't an EVIL discussion to me. My view is that everything I put out on
the internet is public. Things I want to keep private is the same as keeping
my home safe. I can make it difficult for people to break in BUT if they want
to I know that they can with enough effort. My job is just to make it more
difficult than worth it.

Everyone is spitting data into the world. Who is seeing it is the question? I
never stop being amazed at how people view the Internet as a private place.

Sure you can use Tor and Tail but really the Internet is not a locked box.
Also I know that I am viewed as suspect by my government if I run either one
of those on my IP. Causing them to think it is worth it to break in and look
at my data.

Google is services I get for letting them see what I do. I am okay with being
the product and use my internet as such. If you don't want to they don't have
a business model for that.

------
jfasi
Whenever Google puts out a product, you can bet your bottom dollar the
comments will be dominated by the cynical view that every product Google
releases is somehow the product of a group of shady, hunched-over people with
wild eyes rubbing their hands together and saying "How do we get even _more_
data out of people?" "I've got it!" " _cackling_." This comment is not like
that. In the interest of varying the discussion, here's an alternate
interpretation.

Google produces Android, which is a platform. The platform business model is
well understood: gain a toehold by making a product that provides some
fundamental service (telephony, mobile internet, app store), then expand the
value of your platform by covering the long tail of things people might find
useful (Keep, the new camera app, the various rollouts mobile versions of
well-known Google products).

This if why Google Keep exists. Let's say Keep has 10 engineers working on it.
Imagine the impact those ten people can have: Android has an addressable
market of well over a billion handsets. If you apply standard shitty-startup-
business-plan logic, capturing even one percent of them is a significant user
base. And they don't even need to worry about revenue because the advertising
business is literally printing money! It almost makes you envy them for
working at such a large company.

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snogglethorpe
Why all the weird snarky replies?

Google Keep is a simple little synchronized notepad thing... It isn't an all-
singing, all-dancing, mega-app―but it is quite useful for keeping notes which
you can then access from everywhere, and it's quick and easy to use.

I've found it very handy!

~~~
writtles
Same here. Now it only needs the capability to share items (lists in
particular).

------
casca
For anyone else who wants to know what this is without signing in:
[http://www.google.com/keep/](http://www.google.com/keep/)

It looks like Google's taking on Evernote with Keep.

~~~
Cyph0n
Looks more like a Trello competitor to me.

~~~
nnain
Not really -- I have used both and they address different requirements (at
least as of today). But definitely a competition for Evernote.

~~~
jclos
I don't even think it is much competition for Evernote. They sit on two sides
of the same need's spectrum of complexity, the extreme simplicity of Keep and
the extreme feature-completeness of Evernote and OneNote. The main competitor
of Keep is just Dropbox + some txt file.

~~~
nnain
I agree. Though my Evernote usage has dipped since I started using Keep. I
just need these for a rare plain-text note/list and the Keep App launches
effortlessly.

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warcode
Been using keep for all my notes for a while now. Did something happen to make
it worth posting this today?

~~~
fauria
It used to be [http://drive.google.com/keep](http://drive.google.com/keep) ,
may be the new URL.

~~~
jatin085
This URL exists since long now.

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zoul
Keep until discontinued?

~~~
atmosx
Exactly. Extremely simple with tones of different solutions... It's just a
side-project with no income that soon will be discharged.

------
Polarity
coded my own thing [http://todo.share.ac/](http://todo.share.ac/)

~~~
afaqurk
I love it. Your implementation is exactly what I think these apps should be:
simple, extreme minimalism of UI, and light weight.

~~~
snogglethorpe
Sooooo.... sort of like Google Keep...?

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f4stjack
Looks cool but when I saw it the first question/thought popped into my mind
was: "When will Google shut this down?"

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ghostbunnies
I don't see what's the 'news' here? This has been launched in 2013. OMG,
please let me submit Coinbase! :)

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jpswade
Google have killed projects bigger than this in the past so they can focus on
big problems.

So I ask, what big problem does this solve?

~~~
AUmrysh
That's the biggest reason I'm not enthusiastic to use new google products. In
this case, it looks nice and all, but Trello is more likely to still be there
in 2 years.

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robertcope
I could never find a way to share notes with anyone. Seems like a required
feature to me. Am I missing it?

~~~
McGuffin
I can't seem to find it in the web version, but you can share from the android
app, to my knowledge.

------
drKarl
Looking for Evernote self-hosted replacements I found these for now:

[https://github.com/grena/gruik](https://github.com/grena/gruik)

[https://github.com/shubik22/BetterNote](https://github.com/shubik22/BetterNote)

The second one I think doesn't have private notes, so lacks something very
important. Nice bases to build something more robust, though

------
muhuk
Looks like this is competing with Trello. But, if the goal is productivity as
opposed to social widgetry, the latter is light years ahead IMO.

------
louhike
If I remember well, it was a separate product at first, then it was
incorporated to GDrive. So they are doing the contrary now.

EDIT: I was wrong. There was a similar product named NoteBook before that and
they shut it down.
[http://www.google.com/googlenotebook/faq.html](http://www.google.com/googlenotebook/faq.html)

------
bfwi
I've been thinking about finding an app like this for a while. This is an ok
implementation, but I think it's too rigid. Something like this should be
messier and give the user some more freedom to arrange stuff the way he wants.
More like an actual desk and less like a list of notes. Does anyone know of an
app like that?

------
fs111
I use a Moleskine and an pen. Works everywhere, never crashes, no dependency
on a third party.

~~~
jjnoakes
Why not keep all of your notes in your head?

You get the audio and images (and even video!) for free, searching and sorting
are much faster, and you'll never have to buy pen or paper again.

And as a bonus, you'll stop polluting all the time (all of those empty pens
and pieces of scribbled-on, crumpled-up paper) - when you die, your notes will
just vanish with you.

Sounds like I just saved you a ton of money and time, and my advice can help
you save the planet a little too.

Switch today!

~~~
fs111
ah come one, you can do better than that. Trolling is a art, not this lame
attempt you are showing here...

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01Michael10
I don't get why this was posted? There some news associated with this?

Google Keep is an app I have been using for over a year now... I think will
submit a random Google service's website and make HN's front page also today.

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jgeerts
When the major software company after making the web a resourceful place
decides that taking notes is the next problem to tackle means that absolutely
every problem in the world has already been solved.

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criswell
It's confusing that there's "Notes" here but I don't see the "Notes" from my
gmail account. Which would be useful since it syncs up with my phone's notes.

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Zigurd
The best thing about a 2650x1440 monitor is that all my Google Keep to do
lists fit on the screen without scrolling. I feel so much better now.

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wooptoo
I've been using the mobile app + web version for almost a year. I use the
lists feature for shopping lists, works amazingly well.

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justaman
Ill stay with sticky-notes and white-boards until I have a fully encrypted
digital PA to record and manage this sort of thing for me.

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nrshirj
Looks a lot like Trello! Trello was recently in news for good reason. Seems
now Google's time to catchup with everything!

~~~
k-mcgrady
It's just a simple note taking app. Trello is a project management solution.

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cheshire137
I use both Evernote and Wunderlist. It seems like Google Keep is trying to be
a mixture of the two.

------
kalagan
I've been using Keep on my phone for a while but I didn't know about the
website version.

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_navaneethan
_Google 's Keep will help you to keep engaged_ -tagline for _keep_ :)

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S4M
> Google Keep let's you quickly capture what's on your mind.

Google already knows who my friends are, what they email me, what I look for,
and now it wants to know what's on my mind as well. The service can be
convenient, but it creeps me a bit that Google wants to aggregate even more
information on me.

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dredmorbius
It's Google Nope to me.

This is precisely the sort of feature I'd like to see on a federated,
distributed, secure-from-the-ground-up system. Not cloud. But self-hosted-
with-peers.

See FreedomBox and Sandstorm.io for the closest approximations of this to
date.

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darkmuck
There really needs to be a bulk export feature

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crbaker
Keep is Google's Moonshot for Notes

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ck2
aka the NSA would like you to volunteer your thoughts which they cannot easily
record yet

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ankushio
This was launched months ago

~~~
sniuff
1 year ago

