Google in no hurry to create Chromoid; now Keep shows why

In the same week that Google spilled the beans about Keep, its badly kept secret note-taking app, Chairman Schmidt has been fielding speculation about Google's two OS strategy: Android OS on the smartphones and tablets and Chrome OS as its light-weight challenge to the traditional lap- and desktop computer setup.

On the Chrome Android issue, Schmidt was speaking in India where he ruled out combining Android and Chrome but qualified that by saying that there might be more overlap between the two operating systems.

Which indeed there will be. Enter Keep, Google's challenge to poor old Evernote, the cross-platform note-taking service. According to Google Play (it's handy owning your download store, you can see what apps are moving and why) the Evernote widget has now been downloaded more than 1 million times and the Evernote app more than 10 million.

Time for Google to step in and mop up. 'Keep' is, as it sounds, a cloud-based note taking app. You tap down notes, voice record memoranda and post photos just as you think of them and (crucially) you can do it from any of your gadgets. All your notes will be there waiting for you because Google keeps them all. Rather than having them scattered about on bits of paper or on small word processing files on different computers, Chairman Schmidt and the boys have it all worked out (just don't write 'funeral' or you'll get loads of ads for annuities and health insurance).

There is a download app (haven't seen it yet, but it's coming) for your phone and tablet and access to the cloud is also to be available through Google Drive (can't see that yet, either) directly via the browser and also, no doubt, accessible through an HTML5 widget at some point just to speed things up.

Keep is a stark example of how apps don't run on OSs anymore, they run through them. Two OSs? Who cares?