Yesterday, Google launched a new note taking service called “Google Keep” for devices running on Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and above. “Google Keep” helps one to make notes on their smartphone and the notes thus made are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all of their devices.
Notes on Google Keep can either be a plain text, an audio transcribed to text with a link to the audio file, photos and checklists. A note can be of any colour with 8 different colours available to choose from and can be easily shared as well. Notes when shared on social networks or elsewhere will not give a link to the Google Keep “page” on the web but rather it turns the entire note into a post. Bigger notes needs to be edited before it can be shared on twitter. Notes can also be added from web version of Google Keep and will automatically be synced across all the devices. Google keep also has lock screen widget for adding thoughts without unlocking the device for but its only available for devices running Android 4.2+. Overall the app is elegant, looks clean and pretty simple to use.
The app might provide a tough competition to evernote and more likely to contest with Apple’s own notes app which works across ios devices, as well as macs and are even available on the web with iCloud. It will be interesting to see what Apple does when Google launches the ios version of Google Keep. Also one can sense that a chrome extension or app for Google Keep is coming soon to make it easier for chrome users to save notes or might be even to compete with evernote and other notes apps or extensions on chrome store.