As many Google fans and Internet-goers know by now, Google Reader is dead. The service never had an enormous following, but it did have a dedicated group of users who were upset to see it go. So when Google also revealed a new note-taking service this week, dubbed Google Keep, something surprising but necessary happened: People started asking if they could trust Google anymore.
Over at the Atlantic, journalist James Fallows details the problem that Google has brought upon itself with the death of Reader and the introduction of Keep.
"Google now has a clear enough track record of trying out, and then canceling, 'interesting' new software that I have no idea how long Keep will be around," Fallows wrote. "When Google launched its Google Health service five years ago, it had an allure like Keep's: here was the one place you could store your prescription info, test results, immunization records, and so on and know that you could get at them as time went on.
"That's how I used it -- until Google cancelled this 'experiment' last year. Same with Google Reader, and all the other products in the Google Graveyard that Slate produced last week."
Echoing Fallows, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein asked an important question: "If there's even a 25 percent chance that Google Keep will be canceled in two years, do you really want to be the sucker who spent endless hours organizing your life around it?"
Klein explained that many new apps rely on early adopters to offer developers important feedback as well as spread the word. They're essentially proselytizers hoping to convince their friends, family, and others of a certain service's value. Concerning Google, though, Klein has become wary.
"I'm not sure I want to be a Google early adopter anymore," he said. "I love Google Reader. And I used to use Picnik all the time. I'm tired of losing my services."
Basically, both Fallows and Klein said that services that aren't part of Google's (or any company for that matter) core business are always going to be at risk of cancellation. Even Gmail isn't as important to Google as search. Fallows still trusts Gmail, but otherwise he agreed.
"I trust Google for search, the core of how it stays in business. Similarly for Maps and Earth, which have tremendous public-good side effects but also are integral to Google's business. Plus Gmail and Drive, which keep you in the Google ecosystem," he said.
"But do I trust Google with Keep? No. The idea looks promising, and you can see how it could end up as an integral part of the Google Drive strategy. But you could also imagine that two or three years from now this will be one more "interesting" experiment Google has gotten tired of."
