Evernote better take notes on how Google does note-taking with its new mobile and web app Keep. The talk of the town is Keep is a strong competitor against fan favorite Evernote and may give it a run for its money. News of the app was leaked when it “accidently” appeared in Google Drive several days ago.
Photo Credit: Google
As a short-time user of Evernote I can honestly say I do love using the app-even though tonight was the first I logged in after eight months-and its easy to access old ideas or refer back to ideas/strategies that are still applicable to my current work. Do I really need to use two systems for these purposes? How many notes, checklists, and photos do we really need to keep? If you run a business, consult clients, a studious student, or just a forgetful person that needs constant reminders, these types of apps are handy but you need to choose one and stick with it.
Evernote is growing strategically healthy. The company has found an incredible niche within the academic and business environments, and has a well oiled integration strategy encouraging developers and designers to build products that enhance the overall functionally of Evernote through DevCup. Another interesting line of business is using certain Cannon scanners to directly upload photos and documents, and to store them in Evernote. Thus, Evernote is more than note-taking, it’s cloud storage.
For a company that does not have an exit strategy in terms of being acquired by say a Google, Dropbox, Salesforce, Facebook, or other acquisition happy tech giant that seems to eat up companies, Evernote appears to be in a positive position of sustainability and ongoing improvement. It appears the company is putting its $251M capital raised to good use by continually innovating its offerings and functionality (and making good on shareholders investment return through rounds of fundraising).
Due to the fact the company is striving to be lifers in the business the competition with Google’s Keep will be interesting to follow for two initial reasons.
- Ecosystem: Google views product development as an ecosystem. Each product from Gmail to Google Drive is integrated. With Google you can send and receive email, create documents; store Docs and scanned and/or saved items in a cloud based Drive; download apps from the Play store, You can access each platform basically from one dashboard. Evernote is accessible in the sense where you can access notes in the cloud but Google is an ecosystem product based company. How can Evernote compete with this? In a world where too many apps or systems is frankly too much, streamlining via integration of multiple apps/functions seems like a better option.
- Rate of Adoption: Of Evernote’s 50 million users, how many are suspected to flock over to Keep to test drive the app? Of the percentage of Evernote users that flock to Keep during their test drive period, how many are expected to continually use Keep and discontinue use of Evernote? Google claims to be solving the problem of keeping track of ideas and things to remember with Keep but many other web app and mobile app competitors have been solving this issue for the last 6+ years. Besides transcribing voice notes in Keep, what is the biggest differentiation other than Google integrating the app into its ecosystem?
Either way, the product promise of Evernote and Google Keep is to capture the most important things in life by keeping track of ink and typed notes, photos, audio and webcam notes, and scanned items.
Let’s see if Keep will be a winner or major #fail.
