Google Keep, the not quite Evernote clone, is here

After being accidentally revealed last week, we knew it was only a matter of time before Google Keep was released for public use. It turns out, all that was missing was a cute video to explain how it works. Meet Google Keep but, whatever you do, don’t compare it to Evernote.

As great as smartphones are at managing our lives, as a group they are pretty poor at letting us do something quick. You pull the phone out, unlock it, and if you’re lucky or smart the app you need to complete a task is right there. By the time you’ve actually gotten to the part where you take a note, you’ve managed to go through at least four or five steps. If you’re trying to do something like take a quite note of something, it’s impossible to compare a smartphone to the simplicity of pen and paper.Google is trying to fix this with Keep, and in very specific situations they have done a good job decreasing the number of steps to complete this task.

Keep is super simple, and because of that it might work out. If you have Android 4.2, you can access the app as a Lockscreen widget, so it is very quick to access. The data from the service syncs across all your devices because of Google Drive, and the app allows you to include text, photos, voice translation, and other little bits of information in note form. Once you have a ton of notes, you can access them through a UI that clearly takes cues from Google+. It’s pretty much exactly what you would expect, and again that’s a really good thing. The app requires no user manual, there’s no way you could open this app and not know how it worked. Google managed to make the app exactly what users need in order to use it like a quick note service.

In the end, that’s why this isn’t an Evernote clone. Evernote works well as a note taking service, but it’s clearly designed for long form note taking. You can use it for your ToDo lists, but you can also use it for your study sessions. Google Keep is clearly design for short bursts of information that you will use and throw away. It’s a digital stick note, without the horrible UI mistakes that have been made with digital sticky notes in the past. Keep is available in the Play Store now, so get to it!