Warren Ellis:
Dear Google: why launch Google Keep when you've just proven you'll shut off productivity services when you get bored with maintaining them?
I'd thought of building something like this for my own use last autumn, and ironically actually started building it over the weekend[1] (GF away for the week).
When I was young and naive, reading that one of the big boys was getting into the space where I'd just started a project would have scared me off and I'd have abandoned it. In recent, more clued-up years I'd have thought "ah, market validation!" and ramped up my development effort. Now, in the light of the Reader abandonment, it's more like a feeling of joy that Google will educate the world about how great an idea this is, and then abandon it just about when I have something that other people might actually want to use.
Drive, while also available for free, part of the core of the paid Google Apps offering, and its (as the parallel to OneNote) a key part of Google Apps being an alternative to Microsoft Office (and, consequently, to ChromeOS with Google Apps being an alternative to Windows with Microsoft Office).
Its hardly positioned similarly to Reader which, however popular it may have been with a segment that is overrepresented among active participants of online forums focussed on technology, was pretty distant from any core strategic focus for Google.
So, I wouldn't bank on Google canceling this any time soon (or even in 8 years, as happened with Reader.)
And that can be a compelling reason to do it, anyway, sure.
What, I can't do the same with an RC car chassis and a handful of Arduinos?
So you use Keep it ends up being good[2], but then 1 year from now Google announces it'll be shut down. Oh no! I guess I just have to download all my data from Keep and upload it to Evernote.
I understand people (although seemingly more people than actually used the product) are upset about Reader, and justifiably so, but I think it's a little hyperbolic to evaluate every new Google product in that light.
[1] https://www.google.com/takeout/
[2]I haven't used and don't really plan to, so I have no idea whether or not it's good.
When they realize they want more from you they change things around to make that easy.
If/when they figure out it costs more money to run that pseudo-free service they unplug it.
People then get upset. But that's not Google's fault. We need to consider ourselves lucky that it lasted as long as it did.
As long as this is true Google will remain loyal to them before it's loyal to the end users.
RSS is an open format and because of that you can choose whatever news reader you like.
I hope you'll enjoy whatever app you've found.
It probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense to assume that services introduced after Google announced that they were going to start trimming old offerings that didn't warrant support and increase the focus on what they do introduce are likely to be closed just because Google is closing services introduced before that effort was announced.
The whole point of that effort is to kill the existing zombie offerings and stop creating new ones.
I don't think Apple will block that.
Apple already allows Dropbox SDK apps.