Thoughts on Google software

When Google introduced Google Keep a few weeks ago, I tried it out, was thrilled, and immediately converted all my notes that were in Catch Notes to Google Keep, but I've been having second thoughts almost from the beginning. Keep is very primitive and doesn't seem to be evolving; I had assumed that Google would quickly upgrade the bare-bones product so it could really compete with Catch, but that hasn't happened, while Catch continues to evolve. So I think I'm going to bite the bullet and convert back to Catch, not a terribly big job. I can't realistically use both concurrently, not seriously, at least, since they do not talk to each other and so cannot auto-synchronize, and I need to know I have my data in at least one reliable location.

The situation is somewhat similar with Google Drive versus Dropbox: I immediately adopted Drive when it finally was released and started using it where I had been using Dropbox (as well as Box, Skydrive, Ubuntu One, Mozy Stash, and a few other cloud storage services). Now I see that Drive is not really that great, and Dropbox is very fast and reliable in comparison, as is Box. So I'm shifting away from using Drive to using some of the others. But fortunately, I don't have to choose just one, as I have to do with Keep and Catch; I can (and do) use as many cloud storage services as I want all at the same time, with no conflict.

Google's software is typically so good that I tend to assume that everything they release is going to be best of breed, but this is obviously not true. Chrome, for example, doesn't do much for me as browsers go; I find Firefox better but I like that Chrome has a strong following. And on Android, Chrome seems amazingly slow so Firefox in this case is far better, especially considering the extra features Firefox has that are not found on any other Android browser. Of course, I don't expect anyone to agree with me on this. By the way, my second-favorite Android browser is Boat, which would almost be better than Firefox except that it's missing Firefox's invaluable pretty-printing feature, something that others are sure to copy eventually.