Following right on the announcement of the demise of our beloved Google Reader, Google announces Google Keep, a note-taking app. I haven’t tried it because I already use Springpad, and I’m reluctant to move everything over to a new app. Springpad also organizes my notes nicely into virtual notebooks; I’m not sure if Keep does this or if it’s more like sticky notes, which, quite frankly, fails to wow me.
A bigger question for me is what if I do start using Google Keep and grow to depend on it, and then Google kills it off? Many others have had similar thoughts, and an article at the Guardian predicts, based on an analysis of the average lifespan of Google products that are eventually killed off, that Google Keep will last about 4 years. “And then either your data will die, or it will have to be collected and then toted around like an old sofa, which will then have to be pushed up the stairs into a new service.”
Many of us can remember Google Notebook, which wasn’t the greatest note-taking application, but which I used because it integrated with all my other Google things. Where is it now? In the Google Graveyard, where Reader will soon be laid to rest.
