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Evernote’s future is in the cloud


benmc

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33 minutes ago, Krunoslav said:

I would really not be surprised at all if this is ground work for future acquisition by Google.

You think Google wants to break into the note application business - oh wait, they already have their own service - I'm not seeing the benefit there
I think they're more interested in gaining paying clients for the Cloud Platform - hense the Evernote deal

>>So it would be no surprise whatsoever that in few years we just read Evernote blog update: We are so proud to announce that we are now part of Google. The acquisition has been done

The future may have an acquisition, but that's another subject
It may be Google, or some other company.  I'd be concerned when/if they change the TOS

>> it just smells bad.

Does it smell like ignorance; like people who won't listen to the facts because of closed minds  ??

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2 minutes ago, DTLow said:

You think Google wants to break into the note application business - oh wait, they already have their own service - I'm not seeing the benefit there
I think they're more interested in gaining paying clients for the Cloud Platform - hense the Evernote deal

>>So it would be no surprise whatsoever that in few years we just read Evernote blog update: We are so proud to announce that we are now part of Google. The acquisition has been done

The future may have an acquisition, but that's another subject
It may be Google, or some other company.  I'd be concerned if they change the TOS

>> it just smells bad.

Does it smell like ignorance; like people who won't listen to the facts because of closed mindsets

Time will tell.

BTW. Stick to the argument, don't resort to insulting those who think differently than you. Either make a counter argument, or don't comment.

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Google's  notoriety of using personal data to benefit their paid advertisers is a concern. I'd be very unhappy to see their ads pop up on our account, or to see our data being used to target personal interests and buying habits. Will your contract with Google include protection for us from this Google practice?

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5 minutes ago, LindaC said:

Google's  notoriety of using personal data to benefit their paid advertisers is a concern. I'd be very unhappy to see their ads pop up on our account, or to see our data being used to target personal interests and buying habits. Will your contract with Google include protection for us from this Google practice?

Yes 100%. Google are only allowed to access the Evernote data for the purposes of providing the cloud services to Evernote and not for any other reason. Your data will not be 'mined' by Google or used to target ads etc.

As a number of people have pointed out on this forum, there are two very different sides to Google these days. There is still a part who give you something for free i.e. Search but then use that data to target ads towards you etc. There is also the newer Cloud business, their model is very different. They charge customers for services and don't use their data in other ways.

Hope this helps

Ben

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5 minutes ago, benmc said:

Yes 100%. Google are only allowed to access the Evernote data for the purposes of providing the cloud services to Evernote and not for any other reason. Your data will not be 'mined' by Google or used to target ads etc.

As a number of people have pointed out on this forum, there are two very different sides to Google these days. There is still a part who give you something for free i.e. Search but then use that data to target ads towards you etc. There is also the newer Cloud business, their model is very different. They charge customers for services and don't use their data in other ways.

Hope this helps

Ben

Ben, this puts my mind at ease. Thank you so much for your prompt reply. I love Evernote, and looking forward to the future. 

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Moving to the cloud makes sense to me and I didn't see the anti-Google backlash coming, although I should have. I'm guessing the reaction would have been more muted if Evernote had chosen another vendor, not that they should have. Seems that everyone is a cynic these days. 

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I have been using Evernote since Dec 2009 and I know that because I have it on my very first note. Now many thousands of notes later I still love the app and is one of my top 3 used apps on my iPhone. 

Lately I have been worried a bit of what will happen if Evernote went away? I do not have a any replacement for it. So todays new give me a lot of confidence in the service.

Great News!

Screenshot 2016-09-20 19.37.00.png

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On 9/13/2016 at 10:01 AM, Marc_ said:

You or Google may say that, but there's a huge trust issue when Google is involved. I won't be surprised if a few years from know we will learn that Google "by mistake" made some "errors" and used it for some purposes anyway.

We're not talking about just some data. We're talking about, at least for me, quite sensitive data. I don't trust Google. Never will. Therefore I will migrate to something else.

Very bad news.

I have to agree, the whole point to having evernote was to keep sensitive notes away and seperate them from the big companies.  I don't trust Google and I wouldn't be surprised if I saw some of my private notes appear on my Google Drive with a note reading "hey we thought we'd make it easier for you [and the world] to access your private and sensitive notes! :)"

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If moving to the cloud, I assume Evernote data will not be accessible offline? A core use-case of ours is to collect files and information when at client sites and conferences and be equipped with a searchable local data store to compile articles and reports while traveling . If data is not available offline, I will likely keep Evernote for personal use but would be forced to move our business solution to another product.

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46 minutes ago, benmc said:

Yes 100%. Google are only allowed to access the Evernote data for the purposes of providing the cloud services to Evernote and not for any other reason. Your data will not be 'mined' by Google or used to target ads etc.

As a number of people have pointed out on this forum, there are two very different sides to Google these days. There is still a part who give you something for free i.e. Search but then use that data to target ads towards you etc. There is also the newer Cloud business, their model is very different. They charge customers for services and don't use their data in other ways.

Hope this helps

Ben

Hi Ben. I think you've been consistent and clear so far in answering concerns about Google's access to our data, but I wonder if you could go over it again regarding two specific questions:

1. As I (mis?) understand Google's API policies for developers, they reserve the right to monitor the use of the APIs for various reasons, including to ensure that they are being used in a proper manner (security and so forth). This means that there are at least two points at which Google employees will be accessing our data: at rest on the cloud and when Google makes use of the APIs. Is this correct? I think we have already covered the fact that employees (a limited number) will have access, and that makes sense (would we expect otherwise?), but I just want to confirm which situations might be included.

2. More to the point, they typically also reserve the right to use data shared with them through APIs to improve their services. I am not talking about targeting ads here, but about improving the accuracy of their machine learning. Doesn't this imply that they will be using our data (or data about our data). The conventional API agreements may not apply here. I don't know. I'd just like a clarification of this. Perhaps it really is the case that Evernote passes its data through the APIs and Google has absolutely no relation with the data beyond supplying the hardware and software to churn out the results. This doesn't seem to be the case in regular use of the APIs, and that is one of my concerns here.

Again, I am not trying to imply some kind of nefarious activity is occurring. For example, Apple with iOS 10 has apparently introduced "differential privacy" (an interesting euphemism for data mining) in order to gather data for its machine learning (as I understand it). It seems to be rather widespread to gather data in this way (Microsoft with Windows 10 also does it). Just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it right (as our moms would say), but that also doesn't make Google evil. 

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1 hour ago, Krunoslav said:

So. An ex Google X man, joins Evernote as CEO. Than we see Google Drive integration and than we see If every time before during or after acquisitions and mergers I heard "business as usual" from the PR department. If they gave me a penny each they I heard that I would be a rich man today.

Google Drive seems to be far from ideal solution. Another point of contact just means more things can go wrong. Besides I'm pretty sure it was part of the back room deal. Google sneaks in the back door with its cloud to temp more new users from a fresh market, and Evernote gets a life jacket from Google because poor planing and management have left the with big cost of maintaining their cloud and not great biz model that would pay for it.

I would hope there are some true benefits to end users like increase in upload speeds and capacity for everyone directly from evernote. Don't forget few months ago they increase the prices for everyone and for some quite a bit and limited the free users but offered little or nothing in return.

I think they are not providing enough value for what they are charging unless you are heavily invested in their platform. For new users or those not invested too much competition from Microsoft for example offers more in many areas. I hope Evernote get get their stuff together and start innovating again. Right now they are playing slow catchup game.

Current new Evernote CEO Is Former Google X Executive Chris O'Neill. Hahaha! I swear this writs it self... Evernote in their blog wrote and I quote:

"After an intensive period of research and investigation involving several cloud providers, we have selected Google Cloud Platform to provide our data infrastructure moving forward."

Hahaha. You have to admit, its sooooo suspicious. Ex Google or Google X Executive Chris O'Neill and current Evernote CEO somehow of all the options they "intensively researched" decided to go with Google option that somehow benefits Google and even Evernote but not really the end users who again were not even involved in the decision making process. And according to Evernote themselves both Google and Evernote will now how access to all our information. I personally don't have much to hide but I don't think I had that in mind when I agreed to give Evernote my info.

All this sounds a bit to much like "Good all boy" network. I would not be surprised if this is ground work for Google take over and in few years Evernote will be GoogleNote. Something just smells bad. What do you guys think.

Evernote has been ***** around for years now. Ignoring user request, pursuing some phantom ideas that never worked pushed by the last CEO and now they found that with no innovation and far from stellar customer service their business model is not enough to support the growing demand and they can't live of the old glory forever. So first thing they do is new CEO. He than makes a decision to raise prices for paying customers, cut the features for free users forcing them to pay or leave and provides zero benefits in return. Users gets pissed but so what there are 200 mill of them he says.

Than they try to integrate Google Drive into evernote on desktop and web. Probably a deal made with Google so that google can tap into new market with its Google Drive and others services, and in return they get a sweet deal on Google cloud. Current Evernote CEO is former Google guy so God knows what deals they made behind closed doors. And no one off course ever asked us the users about any of this. Evernote is struggling and Google just throw them life jacket. I'm sure they will want something in return.

So it would be no surprise whatsoever that in few years we just read Evernote blog update: We are so proud to announce that we are now part of Google. The acquisition has been done and we want to celebrate this proud moment with you our loyal users. Its been a long road with some ups and downs but finally we have a new home. We will continue to make our products great and share this journey with you." End sarcasm.

it just smells bad. Mainly because Google could really use this market and who is Evernote CEO now and how he runs the company, I would really not be surprised at all if this is ground work for future acquisition by Google. Microstot bough Sunrise and Wunderlist and few others, Apple is mostly falling behind or not competing in this space so its up to Google to buy in the rest. Google note taking app is not serious enough but I'm sure Google would like to add Evernote. Makes perfect sense. They already have the inside man. What the expression: Follow the money.

Will see in few years I guess.

Wow, yeah, I think that I'll remove all my sensitive stuff and simply use evernote as a tool for keeping my generic notes, recipies, reminders, and eventually I'll phase it out as GoogleNote kicks in.

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I am already fully committed to Google for better or for worse so I welcome this announcement.  I hope it leads to more integration with Google down the road.  Whether that is the case or not it seems for me that this is a great move.  Other apparently are not as happy about it.  Thank you for the information.

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21 minutes ago, Marcked said:

If moving to the cloud, I assume Evernote data will not be accessible offline? A core use-case of ours is to collect files and information when at client sites and conferences and be equipped with a searchable local data store to compile articles and reports while traveling . If data is not available offline, I will likely keep Evernote for personal use but would be forced to move our business solution to another product.

Your Notes will still be available offline as they are today. We are just changing our backend servers, it will not change the Evernote service you use.

 

Ben

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9 minutes ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

Hi Ben. I think you've been consistent and clear so far in answering concerns about Google's access to our data, but I wonder if you could go over it again regarding two specific questions:

1. As I (mis?) understand Google's API policies for developers, they reserve the right to monitor the use of the APIs for various reasons, including to ensure that they are being used in a proper manner (security and so forth). This means that there are at least two points at which Google employees will be accessing our data: at rest on the cloud and when Google makes use of the APIs. Is this correct? I think we have already covered the fact that employees (a limited number) will have access, and that makes sense (would we expect otherwise?), but I just want to confirm which situations might be included.

2. More to the point, they typically also reserve the right to use data shared with them through APIs to improve their services. I am not talking about targeting ads here, but about improving the accuracy of their machine learning. Doesn't this imply that they will be using our data (or data about our data). The conventional API agreements may not apply here. I don't know. I'd just like a clarification of this. Perhaps it really is the case that Evernote passes its data through the APIs and Google has absolutely no relation with the data beyond supplying the hardware and software to churn out the results. This doesn't seem to be the case in regular use of the APIs, and that is one of my concerns here.

Again, I am not trying to imply some kind of nefarious activity is occurring. For example, Apple with iOS 10 has apparently introduced "differential privacy" (an interesting euphemism for data mining) in order to gather data for its machine learning (as I understand it). It seems to be rather widespread to gather data in this way (Microsoft with Windows 10 also does it). Just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it right (as our moms would say), but that also doesn't make Google evil. 

Yep, we got that question and are working with the Google team to get a very clear and concise answer. As soon as we have that it will be shared here.

Ben

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34 minutes ago, Larevalos said:

I have to agree, the whole point to having evernote was to keep sensitive notes away and seperate them from the big companies.  I don't trust Google and I wouldn't be surprised if I saw some of my private notes appear on my Google Drive with a note reading "hey we thought we'd make it easier for you [and the world] to access your private and sensitive notes! :)"

To be very clear on this. 

Our decision to move to Google Cloud platform does not 'enable' or allow this to happen. 

Now something like this could be a future feature that you could enable if you want. It would be very similar to any other integrations we offer such as to Salesforce or LinkedIn.

Ben

 

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On 9/18/2016 at 7:17 AM, tassiecelt said:

...if you want to see what a mess they [Google] make of their products - just look at Google +. It's even worse than Facebook to figure out. (altho to be fair, they've done a nice job of Google Photos)

These are matters of taste, not trust nor of technical merit. I like Google+ and consider it superior to Facebook in design, intuitive interface, and functionality; and, I can't stand Google Photos -- it's one of the worst photo management tools I've ever used (and I've used quite a few).

None of that is relevant when evaluating the decision by Evernote to move from self-hosted servers to Google's cloud solution. Many relevant concerns have been "asked and answered" (repeatedly) and probably could have been addressed better in Evernote's announcement. People are still asking/expressing concerns about things that have already been thoroughly answered because irrelevant observations and speculative tangents (e.g., whether Google might someday acquire Evernote) make the thread unwieldy for anyone reading it to better understand how the change might affect them and their data. And, as with this and some previous comments from others, it's now sliding down into meta-discussion. It would be great if existing answers were read and only new questions were asked.

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On 9/13/2016 at 10:30 AM, JoshSchaidt said:

It seems like taking advantage of machine learning technologies no longer makes my content "mine" exclusively. It now seems like my data is now "ours." Not really thrilled about that. 

You're addressing the wrong issue. I know that for some reason there are people that think of Google as the "big brother" but in reality there are much worse offenders. Microsoft comes to mind. But that's another discussion. 

At this point the privacy threat doesn't come from Google at all. Anyone that thinks so doesn't understand how these cloud services even work. Evernote can certainly use Google's cloud services without Google themselves having access to the data.

As for privacy, if you want a real reason to be concerned, then be concerned for the same reason many European and Asian countries are declining to use data services from US companies. Any US company or company that does business in the US, or let's it's data pass through the US is subject to mass surveillance of any and all of their data. Either with or without their knowledge. Even with their knowledge, such spying often includes a gag order so you'll never know about it.

Even if you sing the song of sheep everywhere and sing "I'm not worried, I have nothing to hide" the issue is one of security. Where there are backdoors for government, there are backdoors for hackers of all types to enter as well. Considering the levels of hacking from corporate, organized crime, and nation state sources, this is a bigger issue than most realize.

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9 minutes ago, Tachyon said:

if you want a real reason to be concerned, then be concerned for the same reason many European and Asian countries are declining to use data services from US companies. Any US company or company that does business in the US, or let's it's data pass through the US is subject to mass surveillance of any and all of their data. Either with or without their knowledge. Even with their knowledge, such spying often includes a gag order so you'll never know about it.

Assuming there's truth in this, why do you think it's restricted to the US.  Why wouldn't the "mass surveillance" be done to data from all countries.

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5 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Assuming there's truth in this, why do you think it's restricted to the US.  Why wouldn't the "mass surveillance" be done to data from all countries.

"Assuming there's truth..."?  Seriously? Have you been living in a cave for the last several years?

US mass surveillance is fact. Forced cooperation of US based companies is fact. Gag orders are fact. The impact on foreign businesses willingness to trust their data to US Cloud services companies is fact. 

As for the reason it affects US data. You've clearly missed the point. The most egregious perpetrator of warrant-less mass surveillance is the US government and it's agencies. The US also has some of the worst privacy protection laws in the civilized world. Europe by contrast, has had increasingly stronger protections for individual privacy including data privacy. Some of these laws were even triggered by the revelations of the extent of US mass surveillance. 

Meanwhile, the US has been aggressively destroying data privacy every way it can. Yes, it has attempted to extend that reach outside it's borders, Fortunately other jurisdictions are pushing back against this. ( see http://www.businessworld.ie/news-from-ireland/Irish-High-Court-gives-US-authorities-a-platform-to-defend-their-surveillance-laws-565047.html )

In the end this means that for now, there is NO expectation of privacy for any data housed in or passing through US based companies. None.  However, for now, there is at least some level of expectation of privacy in many G-20 countries. That means that your data is more at risk for exposure when in the hands of a US based company, despite anything their privacy policies may promise.

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My apologies if my concern has been discussed previously in this thread - it's quite extensive and I don't wish to read through it in its entirety.

My concern is not one of privacy - I think most of us techie types have already sold much of our souls to one or another of our corporate overlords. Of the big three, I have to say that I trust Google slightly more than its counterparts.

What irks me is the recent price increase now being coupled with offloaded server responsibilities. I do think that Evernote is now overpriced for Premium and don't get me wrong, I love the product. But unless the cost savings (all future enhancement platform-ready speak aside) are past back to the users, I see this as another shot taken at its users' expense - many of us being longtime Premium subscribers.

JC

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17 minutes ago, Tachyon said:

US mass surveillance is fact. Forced cooperation of US based companies is fact. Gag orders are fact. The impact on foreign businesses willingness to trust their data to US Cloud services companies is fact. 

It's hard to argue with the facts.

So you think the US is not surveilling data from other countries.

Thats a relief (I live in Canada), however I just assume anything I put in the cloud is being read by NSA and Chinese Agents. I encrypt my private data

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I have been a premium user since I started years ago. I have over 3k notes and I curate them and merge them etc on a weekly basis as part of my workflow.  I have seen prices go up and up and up.  I have seen slow adopting of features and technology quite frankly.  I feel you guys recently hiked the prices to pay for this "supposed savings effort".  The only one that is benefiting here is EN.  Are you eventually selling to Google?  Google has Keep that seem to be making it rounds and getting a second look.  Like I said, you continue to increase the price and put our data in the hands of the people most everyone distrusts.  I am 100% Apple as is my family.  If there is an easy way to migrate to Apple notes, I may do that.  They have come a long way since the old days.  I am frustrated with your decisions because you are pawning it off like a great thing, but reality is, we are not getting a discount, we are not getting new features, we are not getting more storage, we ARE however going to get mined.  Whats in it for us?  Why should we remain loyal to EN when all we get is kicked in teeth?  I will give it some time and see what EN is going to produce with this huge benefit and huge savings..... probably not much except for another price increase to fund the next "benefit" for EN.

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14 minutes ago, NYCJC said:

My apologies if my concern has been discussed previously in this thread - it's quite extensive and I don't wish to read through it in its entirety.

My concern is not one of privacy - I think most of us techie types have already sold much of our souls to one or another of our corporate overlords. Of the big three, I have to say that I trust Google slightly more than its counterparts.

What irks me is the recent price increase now being coupled with offloaded server responsibilities. I do think that Evernote is now overpriced for Premium and don't get me wrong, I love the product. But unless the cost savings (all future enhancement platform-ready speak aside) are past back to the users, I see this as another shot taken at its users' expense - many of us being longtime Premium subscribers.

JC

I am with you JC.  I feel the same way regarding the price:feature.  I think this is benefiting EN and Google and we are left holding the bag.  

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22 minutes ago, mannyf said:

I am with you JC.  I feel the same way regarding the price:feature.  I think this is benefiting EN and Google and we are left holding the bag.  

I full agree. No benefit to the users that we have seen. The cost of making or doing something is not the responsibility of the client. It is yours. If you can't justify it with value, don't mention it. 

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36 minutes ago, mannyf said:

I think this is benefiting EN and Google and we are left holding the bag.  

Can you expand what bag I'm left holding.  I was counting on this back-end server switch to be transparent to the users.

35 minutes ago, dudeman313 said:

Will Evernote issue refunds to Premium users that want to cancel their 1 year membership?

They should refund your money if there's a valid reason.  "I hate Google" is just :lol:

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3 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Can you expand what bag I'm left holding.  I was counting on this back-end server switch to be transparent to the users.

They should refund your money if there's a valid reason.  "I hate Google" is :lol:

We got our prices hiked.  We are paying additional $$ now so EN can presumably make improvements (no roadmap, no foreseeable improvements re: encryption, capacity etc).  However I will bet you that we will see another price increase in the near future.  EN is hurting and the reality is that OneNote and now Apple notes is making a move into the once dominated EN space.  I happen to like the interface and have a lot of notes so I have taken the price increases with a grain of salt, but I am a little pissed off that my money went to EN releasing itself of the upkeep of servers to supposedly be in a better place to make "improvements".  

I should not speak for you, but "I" feel I am holding the bag because I do not trust Google.  They are dirty and have a long standing record of mining data and using it for marketing.  They are the reasons I moved away from all things Google.  I get the delineation between their free and fee business, but I don't think they do or will.  

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Based on what I've seen, if people are worried about their private/sensitive information due to Evernote's relations (whatever they maybe) with Google, simply take your private/sensitive information off of Evernote.  I'm going to use Evernote to store generic information, it's great for grocery lists, reminders, and general to do lists -eventually I may stop using it, who knows.  Once upon a time people in my agency were planning on using Evernote for agency-wide use however between the price increases, the promises for a better service, the marketing shifts (red flags), and finally, the mention of Google, we said no.  Evernote is a good service but if you really feel that your private/sensitive information is at risk, despite whatever contract exists between both parties or reassurances either party makes because of course they are going to make them, simply remove your information before Evernote jumps over to Google cloud servers.  In the end, it's your money, (for those paying for the service like me), you have every right to walk away, you have every right to ignore anyone that tries to convince you to stay, at the end of the day, you have to read all the information that will help you make a decision -it's a personal decision for some, for others it's a business decision (you have to consider your clients).       

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I'm curious as to why we haven't seen any progress in encrypting data at rest server-side.  Client-side encryption is great, but I don't want to enter a password every single time I wish to view information.  The process should be transparent.  This has been a demand from the user community for a very long time,  I think you'd do wonders to ease the concerns of the google haters by ensuring that our data is 100% private end-to-end, with no gaps in between.

I understand the differences between Google's public services, and their cloud services for business/government.  I understand that there are separations and further access controls, but with our data moving outside "the house" as it were, and with the ever growing snooping of certain federal agencies, it's time to give us full encryption.

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48 minutes ago, mannyf said:

We got our prices hiked.  We are paying additional $$ now so EN can presumably make improvements (no roadmap, no foreseeable improvements re: encryption, capacity etc).  However I will bet you that we will see another price increase in the near future.  EN is hurting and the reality is that OneNote and now Apple notes is making a move into the once dominated EN space.  I happen to like the interface and have a lot of notes so I have taken the price increases with a grain of salt, but I am a little pissed off that my money went to EN releasing itself of the upkeep of servers to supposedly be in a better place to make "improvements"

Not trying to pick on you in particular, but if y'all want to yak on Evernote's price increases, then the topic for that is over here: 

You'll be a little late to that party, but maybe something new will be brought up -- you never know...

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7 minutes ago, jefito said:

Not trying to pick on you in particular, but if y'all want to yak on Evernote's price increases, then the topic for that is over here: 

You'll be a little late to that party, but maybe something new will be brought up -- you never know...

My point was not on the price itself, if you read I what I wrote.  What i take issue with is that they hiked the price not to give us more features or capacity but rather to fund their soiree with Google; something they claim will give them more flexibility.   

 

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8 minutes ago, mannyf said:

My point was not on the price itself, if you read I what I wrote.  What i take issue with is that they hiked the price not to give us more features or capacity but rather to fund their soiree with Google; 

Can you point us to your source for this information?

I haven't seen any of the financial details

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On 9/12/2016 at 3:16 PM, gbarry said:

If you're new to our forums and would like to join the discussion with Ben, click "Sign In" at the top right, enter your Evernote account info, select a Display Name and you're all set. Welcome to our community! 

how do we close our account so that the information we currently have on evernote isn't moved over to Google and how do we download all our information to our personal computers so we don't lose everything we have digitized up to this point? 

Thanks for your service over these many years, but I'm just not going on board with this new business model. 

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Well over the past years I have migrated away from some Google products. I no longer use Chrome as my default browser as I did not like the approach Chrome devs were taking towards my security and privacy regarding several aspects of Chrome. Their dev team over the years have shown a take it or leave it attitude when several users of Chrome protested changes and Google denying requests to implement an ability for end users to disable the feature.

I have also stopped using Google+ after using it since its inception. Google seems to take lets see if it sticks to the fridge approach to their software and other products. Putting all one's eggs in one basket is not a safe thing to do as they may get scrambled.

Not being able to have the data in question encrypted on the server and to have Google holding the keys is something I will have to give a fair amount of thought. Thankfully I do not store any really sensitive information on Evernote unlike some people I know do.

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In this crazy election year, it always makes me sad to see that people make so many decisions on what they believe, instead of the actual facts. At the very least, try to learn the facts before repeating the craziness of "Google = data theft."

SMH.

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I feel very uneasy about this alliance with Google.  It makes me feel like a lab monkey:  now Google can study the way we think and how we organize the things that matter most to us.  You can't tell me they won't make use of this opportunity in some way.  Yikes!!

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I don't know about the other alleged security certifications but Google has been trying to pass FedRAMP for nearly three years with no success. I have seen some of the artifacts from their FedRAMP attempts and what I saw was garbage. How can we trust Google when it can't even certify to FedRAMP standards?

Also, I read Google's security info linked in the announcement and it says nothing about privacy. I want a guarantee that the data is not being manipulated by Google in any way. One thing Evernote can do is encrypt the data and hold the keys. Protecting data at rest would make me feel a little more comfortable. 

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10 minutes ago, DCDawg said:

I don't know about the other alleged security certifications but Google has been trying to pass FedRAMP for nearly three years with no success. I have seen some of the artifacts from their FedRAMP attempts and what I saw was garbage. How can we trust Google when it can't even certify to FedRAMP standards?

Also, I read Google's security info linked in the announcement and it says nothing about privacy. I want a guarantee that the data is not being manipulated by Google in any way. One thing Evernote can do is encrypt the data and hold the keys. Protecting data at rest would make me feel a little more comfortable. 

https://marketplace.fedramp.gov/#/product/google-services?sort=productName&productNameSearch=goog

 

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1 hour ago, DTLow said:

Can you point us to your source for this information?

I haven't seen any of the financial details

Look, I don't really care if you are good with all of this.  I may be OK if I do not get jacked up again.  I am going to make a decision and it will not be in any part based on YOUR warm and fuzzier on the situation.  If you cannot see that they raised the prices and suddenly they moved to Google and think that they needed money to make the move thus making us fund it, then good luck.  We got a price increase, quite a large one and got nothing really for it.  This is a decision that I am sure they did not make last night, they must have known that they were going to move to Google before they raised the prices.  If they were going to save all of this money from moving to Google, why raise the price of the service?  I can draw a picture, but I am sure you get it. 

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So you lowered your infrastructure cost, your system and network administration cost, increased the ability to scale, decreased your bandwidth cost (a lot), and yet you doubled the cost of your premium account subscription.  Usually I like a dinner and a movie before I get screwed over.   With all these cost reductions, I expect to see a BIG reduction in subscription cost.

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I'm very disappointed to hear this news. I live in China where Google is blocked. Gmail is blocked. Google search is blocked. Thus my content on Evernote will also be blocked unless I use a VPN. I will now have to research how to migrate all of my data to some other platform. I picked your platform years ago because it WASN'T Google. 

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12 minutes ago, The Panda said:

I'm very disappointed to hear this news. I live in China where Google is blocked. Gmail is blocked. Google search is blocked. Thus my content on Evernote will also be blocked unless I use a VPN. I will now have to research how to migrate all of my data to some other platform. I picked your platform years ago because it WASN'T Google. 

Yes. Exactly what I just said. If Evernote becomes blocked I want a full refund.  Why use a service like Google which is blocked to over a BILLION people??!!

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19 minutes ago, Tom-2020 said:

So you lowered your infrastructure cost, your system and network administration cost, increased the ability to scale, decreased your bandwidth cost (a lot), and yet you doubled the cost of your premium account subscription.  Usually I like a dinner and a movie before I get screwed over.   With all these cost reductions, I expect to see a BIG reduction in subscription cost.

@mannyf didn't provide any sources so I'll ask you

Can you point us to your source for this information?
I haven't seen any of the financial details

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On 9/13/2016 at 9:53 AM, Rich Tener said:

Hi @JoshSchaidt, your data is still yours. When we use Google's Cloud features like machine learning to help you find notes more easily, that doesn't change. Google is subject to strict security and legal obligations which limit what Google can do with you data. Google will not process data for any purpose other than to fulfill our contractual obligations.

Nothing hosted by Google is ours.  Google is just a front company of the NSA.  Evernote should realize that the community as a whole, does not trust them.  This is why we are Evernote users and not Google users.  Now we must become users of something else.  I really wonder how thought out this move was.  You sent out surveys before the price increase structure was solidified, you should have surveyed the community regarding their feelings about Google Cloud.  You may have been surprised by the backlash and not gone through with it. I look forward to how your competitors seize on this.  There is blood in the water.

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This is not good news. You are announcing to the world that you will no longer be in control of your (our) data. Whatever you say from this point forward will require a qualification as another entity has control of the data and is responsible perhaps to you but certainly not to end users. You will not even be able to guarantee what laws will govern the data.

 

If one does not care then the announcement is good, who for example would really want a deep thinker like TRUMP to have any say over their data? Exactly.....

This is nothing but sad news, and I for one will reduce my usage to lists of trivia only.

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I guess this is good news for Evernote and a lot of users. As for myself, I don't trust Google. Maybe it's unjustified, maybe I'm a loon with a tin foil hat ... but maybe not. I won't be renewing.  Thanks for a great few years, your product is good and has been helpful to me.

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I've used Evernote extensively, but have NEVER liked its iPhone interface.  It was great on a computer, but not on mobile devices.  While this move is a great advance into mobility and hopefully, responsive design, the interesting observation will be to see how it works on Apple devices. Personally, I'm considering moving to OneNote since the next tablet will probably be a Surface to eliminate the need for a computer and an iPad.  May still keep Evernote just for its business card storage ability.  Good luck!

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I am a long time Evernote user. I have thoroughly loved using it to organize various aspects of my life from my doctoral program endeavors, to buying a home, to wedding planning. It's pretty much my "go to" ap! This recent decision, while presenting several up sides highlighted in the notification, seems to have significant potential down sides. Similar to others, I don't trust Google and certainly do not turn to them for security of my personal data. Admittedly, this may be an uninformed automatic bias, but it is present nonetheless! :) While I appreciate the idea of a more stable platform (as there is some crashing experienced, but it is rare and only on my old iPad), I need a bit more information. The article notes that there are several companies that use Google's Cloud services. I recall Coca Cola and Spotify were two examples. May I ask if there any examples of companies that use Google's Cloud services with secure data needs? While I'm sure many of us aren't storing social security numbers and whatnot, there still may be a bit more sensitive data that users put into Evernote than what Coca Cola and Spotify (*hopefully*) have collected. Or at least a wider variety of sensitive data.

Thank you.

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On 9/9/2016 at 8:58 AM, benmc said:

 

With our announcement this morning I wanted to introduce myself to the community. I’m Ben McCormack and I lead Evernote’s operations team, the people who make sure Evernote is optimally running on all cylinders. We are also the team within Evernote leading our move onto the Google Cloud platform.

 

We hope our blog post and FAQ answers most questions. I am also joined here by Rich Tener who heads up the Evernote security team. We can cover any further questions you have.

 

We are excited to be able to announce our move to cloud and to be working with the Google team to make it a huge success. We are also very aware that you all use Evernote as an extension of your minds.

Throughout our evaluation and decision making process we have kept our Three Laws of Data Protection front and centre (https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2014/06/03/evernotes-three-laws-data-protection-update/)  

  • Your Data is Yours

  • Your Data is Protected

  • Your Data is Portable

Our move to the Google Cloud platform does not change or alter our commitment to these laws.


Again, please take a moment to read the FAQ and blog post, and let us know what you think.

Ben

 

Good luck with the implementation. I am reminded of a story from 30+ ago. A company was installing a robotic system - an enclosure the size of a shipping container - to automatically mount computer tapes on tape drives (remember them? You're pobably too young). They were told the implementation would be transparent. My friend said "nothing that is 10 feet high, 10 feet wide, and 40 feet long, is transparent to ANYONE."

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This definitely will end my relationship with Evernote. There is a reason why I chose Evernote over Google Cloud: Privacy. This is no longer guaranteed, knowing that Google "learns" your data and how you use it. One more step for Big Brother, watching you a little more. Evernote, you took the wrong direction and this is very unfortunate. 

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1 hour ago, dknie said:

Does this mean the end of the Evernote client app for Windows or Mac?  

No. Why would it? All Evernote s doing is moving the data from their own back-end servers to a Google-run system. The Evernote applications will all interact in the same way with the Evernote service; it's just going to be housed in a new box.

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2 hours ago, NadiaM said:

This definitely will end my relationship with Evernote. There is a reason why I chose Evernote over Google Cloud: Privacy. This is no longer guaranteed, knowing that Google "learns" your data and how you use it. One more step for Big Brother, watching you a little more. Evernote, you took the wrong direction and this is very unfortunate. 

 

1 hour ago, cloudydoug said:

"My data is mine?" What does that even mean? Once Google harvests it... it is harvested. Thanks for selling my data to Google for me. Much Appreciated. Do I cut a percentage of the proceeds? Is the check in the mail?

 

6 hours ago, Desert Rat said:

Google is just a front company of the NSA. 

The amount of uninformed FUD spread by the people is really astonishing

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That's positive news; however, why is Evernote still so slow in doing rudimentary trouble-shooting with its product, both mobile and web-based? Every time there is a glitchand there have been many in recent months—I have had to send proof of it to the Evernote development team. Other apps search for problems and release updates to fix them. Evernote seems to wait until users bring problems to its attention. Updates are infrequent.

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I have been using everything I can that Google offers to try and make my life easier to keep track of personal and business information. Having the ability to see my data on any devices has been fantastic. They I found Evernote preinstalled on my phone. Thought I would give it a try. Love it, love learning to do more and more with it. It is so much easier than using Google stuff. I'm not concerned about Google being able to see my data. I'm not a crack dealer nor a crook of any type. Nor am I a paranoid "they are all out to get us" type person. If I have information that I don't want out in the net, I don't put it on the net at all, Evernote or anything.

Paranoia is paranoia, there is nothing that Evernote can say that will keep those sorts of people happy. If you are so worried about Google, why are you not worried that Evernote is mining your data a selling it? It is in the same realm of possibility.

I'm hoping that Evernote does being to integrate more with all the other Google features, Maps, Calendar....... The more integrated they are the more I can do with less work.

Happy me!!!

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2 hours ago, sangadi said:

I don't care who hosts the backend servers for Evernote. If the news ever come out that Google was able to mine data from Evernote customers, I will be the first one to sue Evernote. 

I believe if their Cloud Platform customers discovered the data was being mined, thy would be suing Google

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1 minute ago, DTLow said:

I believe if their Cloud Platform customers discovered the data was being mined, thy would be suing Google

In the end Google would be sued. But for end user, Evernote since they published  that our Data is secure and will not be mined. If not they should tell that our data is in the hands of Google :)

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2 minutes ago, sangadi said:

In the end Google would be sued. But for end user, Evernote since they published  that our Data is secure and will not be mined. If not they should tell that our data is in the hands of Google :)

Not sure what you're saying
- Evernote has announced the change to their back-end servers (yes, its the Google Cloud Platform)
- Evernote has stated that our data will continue to be secure

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Seems everyone is concerned about data mining and Google trustworthy-ness. It would seem if data was encrypted to and from client before syncing would be a relatively simple fix. I sort of assumed this was already built into Evernote already, strange. I think Google has plenty of data to churn other than Evernote accounts if they really wanted too. But the feature of encryption/decryption  before transfer over the internet is attractive to customers on it's own.

Anyway with client encryption there would be nothing to data-mine on the servers but random data. .

.

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1 hour ago, Mick K said:

That's positive news; however, why is Evernote still so slow in doing rudimentary trouble-shooting with its product, both mobile and web-based? Every time there is a glitchand there have been many in recent months—I have had to send proof of it to the Evernote development team. Other apps search for problems and release updates to fix them. Evernote seems to wait until users bring problems to its attention. Updates are infrequent.

Your post seems to be a completely separate topic.
However, in relation to this discussion, perhaps this move will allow staff to be relocated to the "rudimentary trouble-shooting" department

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29 minutes ago, jhnstacy said:

Everybody knows the Government/NSA has access to Google's data.  What type of protection do we have from the Government or Google from snooping in our notes?  They already snoop into cell phones, browsers, credit cards, banks etc....  Kinda spooky?

The government and NSA have the same access to Evernote data. Were you worried about that? 

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33 minutes ago, Justin_ said:

Seems everyone is concerned about data mining and Google trustworthy-ness. It would seem if data was encrypted to and from client before syncing would be a relatively simple fix. I sort of assumed this was already built into Evernote already, strange. I think Google has plenty of data to churn other than Evernote accounts if they really wanted too. But the feature of encryption/decryption  before transfer over the internet is attractive to customers on it's own.

Anyway with client encryption there would be nothing to data-mine on the servers but random data. .

.

I encrypt my data that I want to keep private

Evernote does have an encryption feature built in to the desktop platforms for encypting text

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Hurray! Yes--between Evernote and Dropbox, my life is already largely in the cloud. I love this move to the Google cloud, and I thank you for being innovative and creating such a great product. I used to use several reams of paper every year copying articles I want to use sometime in the future (I am a teacher.) I previously filled filing cabinets with articles about my favorite topics (my collections.) And then along came Evernote. Wow! I teach science, and now I am definitely more "environmentally friendly." Have receipts from bills you paid online? What is easier than clicking on the cute little elephant, who indeed remembers everything. Thanks again!

CKC

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1 hour ago, EvernoteUserName said:

I hope that all the freed up resources from this change to the cloud will be used to resurrect Evernote Food. It was my primary reason for using Evernote (as it was for my friends).  That would really be a benefit of this move.  

I wouldn't hold your breath on this one.  Evernote appears to be focusing more on their core product.

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any enhancements with sharing to the outside world (users outside of Evernote)?    That;s the biggest downside to me - outsiders tell me they "can't open" what I have shared from evernote.   It becomes a personal app, not the big solution it could be.  

 

 

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37 minutes ago, DCDawg said:

Is Evernote going to respond to cogent questions or will they let this be a forum for some to vent?

They only respond to praise and not much else. They are shall we say very selective about it. Which just brings in more criticism for good reason.

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36 minutes ago, DCDawg said:

Is Evernote going to respond to cogent questions or will they let this be a forum for some to vent?

Have you actually read the entire thread? Evernote staffers have answered pretty much every reasonable question, some of them more than once.

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1 minute ago, jefito said:

Have you actually read the entire thread? Evernote staffers have answered pretty much every reasonable question, some of them more than once.

I asked a cogent question about security and privacy based on their and Google's claims yet I have not heard anything from them.

Let's see if Evernote responds to the following:

  1. Having been involved in a review Google's FedRAMP certification, it is difficult to trust Google's assertions of their security. The other certifications they mention are known to be less rigorous (ISO 27000 is close but the requirements are less than FedRAMP and PCI-DSS is far less than FedRAMP). This is NOT conspiracy theory. This is a serious review of Google's security assertions.[*] However, this would only be effective for the IaaS portion of the service. What changes for Evernote's security? Will Evernote undergo certification? 
  2. While Google and their contract might say that your data is private, there is a risk of data at rest within a cloud infrastructure. Aside from the conspiracy theories of what Google will do, how can we know that Evernote is mitigating the risks to our data at rest?

[*] Before someone says that their documentation is FedRAMP compliant, please read their words again. Their application engine has a few agency certifications. Their IaaS and services are NOT FedRAMP certified. Moreover, the application engine is distinct from their infrastructure which is not certified.

Yes, I do this government infosec stuff for a living. 

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2 minutes ago, DCDawg said:

I asked a cogent question about security and privacy based on their and Google's claims yet I have not heard anything from them.

Let's see if Evernote responds to the following:

  1. Having been involved in a review Google's FedRAMP certification, it is difficult to trust Google's assertions of their security. The other certifications they mention are known to be less rigorous (ISO 27000 is close but the requirements are less than FedRAMP and PCI-DSS is far less than FedRAMP). This is NOT conspiracy theory. This is a serious review of Google's security assertions.[*] However, this would only be effective for the IaaS portion of the service. What changes for Evernote's security? Will Evernote undergo certification? 
  2. While Google and their contract might say that your data is private, there is a risk of data at rest within a cloud infrastructure. Aside from the conspiracy theories of what Google will do, how can we know that Evernote is mitigating the risks to our data at rest?

[*] Before someone says that their documentation is FedRAMP compliant, please read their words again. Their application engine has a few agency certifications. Their IaaS and services are NOT FedRAMP certified. Moreover, the application engine is distinct from their infrastructure which is not certified.

Yes, I do this government infosec stuff for a living. 

Does Evernote have FedRAMP certification right now? 

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56 minutes ago, ekincaid said:

I think this trust issue people have is ridiculous. One thing left to say YEAH! 

I would disagree. I'm not going to try and convince you. This is a political issue, however. Some people feel they "have nothing to hide" and others feel that Google, and/or the NSA pose a much larger threat to our society. To the former, those who disagree just look like people who are spreading FUD. To the latter the others look like people who are potentially dangerously naive. There are very smart people on both sides of this issue, we will not solve this in this forum.

I would hope that EN would register the number of people who have had a problem with their new strategy, perhaps even enough to reconsider.

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1 hour ago, DCDawg said:

Is Evernote going to respond to cogent questions or will they let this be a forum for some to vent?

So far, I've seen the following responses

On 2016-09-13 at 9:53 AM, Rich Tener said:

Hi @JoshSchaidt, your data is still yours. When we use Google's Cloud features like machine learning to help you find notes more easily, that doesn't change. Google is subject to strict security and legal obligations which limit what Google can do with you data. Google will not process data for any purpose other than to fulfill our contractual obligations.

 

On 2016-09-13 at 10:10 AM, benmc said:

Our focus is on making the transition as seamless as possible. We don't want our users impacted negatively by this migration.

 

On 2016-09-13 at 11:05 AM, benmc said:

As part of the migration we are not planning to make any changes to our APIs. 

 

On 2016-09-13 at 0:06 PM, benmc said:

We appreciate the positive feedback, we are super excited about the future working with the Google Cloud platform.

This announcement does not mean we are enabling integrations with the Google products such as Calendar and Google search but we are always evaluating how we can make our users lives easier by enabling such integrations.

On the subject of becoming your Digital Brain, this is completely our view of the future and we hope having access to great AI/Machine Learning features helps us work towards that vision.

Ben

 

 

 

On 2016-09-13 at 0:37 PM, benmc said:
 
We would hate to lose you as a user and would like to understand what's driving your decision?
 
We are fully committed to our Three Laws of Data Protection and our decision to move to the Google Cloud platform does not change that commitment.

 

On 2016-09-13 at 0:42 PM, Rich Tener said:

@Rick G, @RMansfield I understand your concern and we had the same concerns about how they would use our customers' data. The Cloud Platform side of their business is separate from their search and other consumer products. Google is contractually bound not to process data for any purpose other than to deliver cloud services to Evernote.

 

On 2016-09-13 at 1:01 PM, Rich Tener said:

We didn’t update our Three Laws of Data Protection for this announcement. We did update those laws in 2014 from the original post we made in 2011.

 

On 2016-09-13 at 1:29 PM, Rich Tener said:

We provide you with the ability to encrypt segments of text within any given note. You can learn how to encrypt text by reviewing this article.

 

On 2016-09-13 at 1:54 PM, Rich Tener said:

Correct. We don’t provide you with a feature that lets you client-side encrypt all your content in a way that we can no longer read it. The only end-to-end encryption feature we offer is note text encryption. We’ve had a lot of people voice their interest in full note, notebook, and account encryption, but we don’t have any plans to support that right now.

Yes. Both Evernote and Google will have access to data that you don’t manually encrypt using our note text encryption feature.

 

On 2016-09-13 at 2:25 PM, Rich Tener said:

When we move your note data to the cloud, we will be using Google’s built-in encryption-at-rest features. That means that your data will be protected in a situation where someone steals a physical server or hard drive from a Google data center.

More technically, we are using Google's server-side encryption feature with Google-managed encryption keys to encrypt all data at rest using AES-256, transparently and automatically. For more detail, you can read about Google server-side encryption here:

We will continue to protect your data in transit using Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption.

 

On 2016-09-14 at 9:53 AM, Rich Tener said:

You are correct that the data is on their storage and encrypted with their keys, so technically they can access it. As our cloud provider, Google inherently has access to Evernote data. When we made the decision to move to a cloud we knew that we would be extending trust to our cloud partner. Our trust, security, and privacy reviews took this into account as we explored the scenarios where a Google employee might need to access our data. We confirmed with Google that if an employee needed to access Evernote data, it would be:

  • restricted to a minimal set of employees with a business need
  • monitored and audited to make sure that access wasn't being abused

For more information on Google’s administrative access practices, check out their security whitepaper.

Google's access to Evernote data is also subject to strict security and legal obligations and Google won’t process data for any purpose other than to deliver cloud services to Evernote.

 

On 2016-09-14 at 10:10 AM, Rich Tener said:

@DTLow, @Dave-in-Decatur - Our only announcement in regard to advertising was that we are committed to our Three Laws of Data Protection and Google is not allowed to use your data for their advertising purposes. Also, check out our FAQ for more information.

 

On 2016-09-14 at 10:19 AM, benmc said:

One of our reasons to move away from running physical servers etc is to allow us to focus on things that directly benefit our end users/partners. So while there is no concrete plan to change the APIs, our move to cloud should give us that opportunity in the future.

We are also being very deliberate to change as little as possible during the migration and we wanted to be clear with everyone that there are no end-user impacting application related changes/updates being made as part of the move to Google Cloud.

Hope this clarifies?

Ben

 

 

 

On 2016-09-14 at 1:56 PM, benmc said:

Yep - We have been looking at the migration options and really did not like a longer protracted migration where we are constantly wondering what broke, the migration or the latest release. We have chosen to focus the whole Operations team at Evernote on swiftly and seamlessly executing the migration by the end of this year. Expect to see a more technically focused blog post in a few weeks that covers how we are going to achieve this. 

Ben

 

 

On 2016-09-15 at 11:22 AM, benmc said:

Our overall vision is that we make use of Google Machine Learning APIs to enhance the feature set.

The ability to opt out is something we are investigating, but it is a nuanced question. There are a number of ways in which we currently process your data in order to make the Evernote service work the way you expect it to work (for example, search or text search within PDFs). Any ability to opt out would need to be balanced against the potential of such an opt out to degrade the level of service and functionality we offer and you expect.

Ben

 

On 2016-09-15 at 3:39 PM, benmc said:

Reading through the comments so far, there are a number of questions about our future use of Machine Learning technology. We wanted to take this opportunity to clarify and clearly state that we currently use in-house developed Machine Learning to deliver features such as:

Recipe classification

Auto tagging when using Web Clipper

The Context feature

Advanced image recognition

 

Over time we hope to utilize Google Cloud services to extend this list.

 

The details of how we use your data are further documented in our Privacy Policy - https://evernote.com/legal/privacy.php


Ben

 

On 2016-09-15 at 9:10 PM, benmc said:

It's probably a good idea that we think about an example.

If someone decides to use the Google Cloud Vision API, it would allow them to analyze and classify images.

Details of this service are here https://cloud.google.com/vision/

Now in order to use this service they would need to pass to Google via an API a copy of their image and what they would get in return is classification details about that image.

So the obvious question now is 'What do Google do with the image you send them? Do they use it for other purposes?'

Now if you dig into the Terms of Service (https://cloud.google.com/terms/) you will find the following

'5.2 Use of Customer Data. Google will not access or use Customer Data, except as necessary to provide the Services to Customer.'

This means that Google has no right to use or access that image for any other purpose other than to provide to you the classification of that image via the API.

 

We hope this provides some clarity to the question.

Ben

 

 

On 2016-09-17 at 11:41 AM, briancaldwell said:

In our FAQ you can find more answers to questions such as this one. 

We encourage you to visit the FAQ yourself to learn more https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/226885427

 

On 2016-09-18 at 3:57 AM, benmc said:

There will be no changes to your notes links etc that you use for private and public sharing.

Ben

 

On 2016-09-19 at 0:50 PM, benmc said:

 

Correct, the primary Evernote datacenter will be on the West Coast of the US and secondary in the Central region of the US.

Being hosted in the cloud does give us greater flexability and ease to offer services out of other global locations in the future but no concrete plans at this time.

Ben

 

23 hours ago, benmc said:

Hi all

Access to the Evernote service (hosted in the US) from China requires that you pass through the Great Firewall of China (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall) which is managed and controlled by the Chinesse government and is something which we have no control or influcence over. 

The best advice is never to assume you can access ANY internet service located outside of China when you are inside China.

Sorry this is not a more definitive answer but it's just something we have no control over.

Ben

 

23 hours ago, benmc said:

To add to the China questions. There is No change to Yinxiang Biji accounts.

 

20 hours ago, benmc said:

@grumpy-monkey Thanks for bringing a bit of order to the discussion :). The whole purpose of this thread is to be open and transparent about the decisions we have made and why. At the end of the day it's your data (Evernote users) and for what we believe are great reasons we are moving that onto a public cloud platform designed, run and maintained by Google.

We want to focus more of our efforts on being an extension of your mind i.e. Our whole purpose for existing and less on running and maintaining data-centers which today has become a 'solved problem' that is well served by the public cloud providers.

We want to spend more time working out how to reduce the maintenance window each week or improving latency for remote users rather than discussing the newest Hard Drive just released.

Rich and I are happy to answer any question we can but ask we are respectful of other forum users.

Thanks

Ben

 

20 hours ago, benmc said:

Our relationship with the Google Cloud platform will not result in your data being mined etc for advertising purposes etc.

We still stand 100% behind your three laws of Data Protction (https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2014/06/03/evernotes-three-laws-data-protection-update/)

 

Ben

 

20 hours ago, benmc said:

Not currently, being on the Google Cloud platform will help us if we chose to go in that direction in the future.

Ben

 

20 hours ago, benmc said:

Yes 100%. Google are only allowed to access the Evernote data for the purposes of providing the cloud services to Evernote and not for any other reason. Your data will not be 'mined' by Google or used to target ads etc.

As a number of people have pointed out on this forum, there are two very different sides to Google these days. There is still a part who give you something for free i.e. Search but then use that data to target ads towards you etc. There is also the newer Cloud business, their model is very different. They charge customers for services and don't use their data in other ways.

Hope this helps

Ben

 

18 hours ago, benmc said:

Your Notes will still be available offline as they are today. We are just changing our backend servers, it will not change the Evernote service you use.

 

Ben

 

18 hours ago, benmc said:

Yep, we got that question and are working with the Google team to get a very clear and concise answer. As soon as we have that it will be shared here.

Ben

 

18 hours ago, benmc said:

To be very clear on this. 

Our decision to move to Google Cloud platform does not 'enable' or allow this to happen. 

Now something like this could be a future feature that you could enable if you want. It would be very similar to any other integrations we offer such as to Salesforce or LinkedIn.

Ben

 

 

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7 minutes ago, lenny_in_CA said:

I would disagree. I'm not going to try and convince you. This is a political issue, however. Some people feel they "have nothing to hide" and others feel that Google, and/or the NSA pose a much larger threat to our society. To the former, those who disagree just look like people who are spreading FUD. To the latter the others look like people who are potentially dangerously naive. There are very smart people on both sides of this issue, we will not solve this in this forum.

I would hope that EN would register the number of people who have had a problem with their new strategy, perhaps even enough to reconsider.

This is not a political issue.
Its a company adjusting their back end data processing resources

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19 minutes ago, DCDawg said:

I asked a cogent question about security and privacy based on their and Google's claims yet I have not heard anything from them.

The question was fine. The implication that they were leaving this as a forum to vent was questionable to anyone paying attention, given their evident engagement. That being said, I wouldn't expect speedy answers here.

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16 minutes ago, lenny_in_CA said:

I would hope that EN would register the number of people who have had a problem with their new strategy, perhaps even enough to reconsider.

Then you should make a feature request asking for that, and see whether people vote it up.

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20 minutes ago, lenny_in_CA said:

I would disagree. I'm not going to try and convince you. This is a political issue, however. Some people feel they "have nothing to hide" and others feel that Google, and/or the NSA pose a much larger threat to our society. To the former, those who disagree just look like people who are spreading FUD. To the latter the others look like people who are potentially dangerously naive. There are very smart people on both sides of this issue, we will not solve this in this forum.

I would hope that EN would register the number of people who have had a problem with their new strategy, perhaps even enough to reconsider.

 

It's the world we live in.... They simply made a business decision. Unless you are simply not connected to the outside world. You have to accept the risk.

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25 minutes ago, lenny_in_CA said:

I would disagree. I'm not going to try and convince you. This is a political issue, however. Some people feel they "have nothing to hide" and others feel that Google, and/or the NSA pose a much larger threat to our society. To the former, those who disagree just look like people who are spreading FUD. To the latter the others look like people who are potentially dangerously naive. There are very smart people on both sides of this issue, we will not solve this in this forum.

I would hope that EN would register the number of people who have had a problem with their new strategy, perhaps even enough to reconsider.

Oh, no, it is not a binary decision.

One thing is believing that we need more privacy and another totally different making false accusations without any base. And no, NSA and Google are not the same level of threat to our society

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2 hours ago, Shb123 said:

any enhancements with sharing to the outside world (users outside of Evernote)?    That;s the biggest downside to me - outsiders tell me they "can't open" what I have shared from evernote.   It becomes a personal app, not the big solution it could be.  

This is totally off topic.  You have to add an "I hate Google" comment

Seriously, you should post this as a separate topic.  There are various sharing options, and I'm able to share my notes.

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2 hours ago, jefito said:

Have you actually read the entire thread? Evernote staffers have answered pretty much every reasonable question, some of them more than once.

I was kind of hoping for an answer to this one, based upon the search incongruities as they exist today, without any additional help.  That and the nefarious potential doings discussed in this thread.  :ph34r::(

 

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Regarding China:

 

Saying Any US site access is not guaranteed and then quoting Wikipedia as a source is an extremely ignorant answer.  Evernote clearly does't understand the situation. US sites can be accessed from China.  Google is specifically BLOCKED. Evernote can be shutting off access to millions of it's customers.  

 

This issue has not been answered.  Evernote should have known this and not had to link to a a Wikipedia article.  It is insulting to your customers to blame the Chinese government.  You know NOW that Google is blocked but aren't addressing the potential problem. 

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37 minutes ago, Rick Conners said:

Regarding China:

 

Saying Any US site access is not guaranteed and then quoting Wikipedia as a source is an extremely ignorant answer.  Evernote clearly does't understand the situation. US sites can be accessed from China.  Google is specifically BLOCKED. Evernote can be shutting off access to millions of it's customers.  

 

This issue has not been answered.  Evernote should have known this and not had to link to a a Wikipedia article.  It is insulting to your customers to blame the Chinese government.  You know NOW that Google is blocked but aren't addressing the potential problem. 

Before you jump to any conclusions, the purpose of commercial cloud systems is to make it look like your system. If Evernote owns the namespace and publishes the Virtual IP (VIP) address under an evernote.com domain (for example), then it would not be a google.com or their 1e100.net alternate address. It would all depend where the DNS is maintained and the VIP is served. 

Again, I am asking Evernote to respond to my Infosec-related issues. If it is not something you want to publish, you have my private email. Use it!

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21 minutes ago, DCDawg said:

Before you jump to any conclusions, the purpose of commercial cloud systems is to make it look like your system. If Evernote owns the namespace and publishes the Virtual IP (VIP) address under an evernote.com domain (for example), then it would not be a google.com or their 1e100.net alternate address. It would all depend where the DNS is maintained and the VIP is served. 

Again, I am asking Evernote to respond to my Infosec-related issues. If it is not something you want to publish, you have my private email. Use it!

You are correct that I do not want to jump to conclusions.  I DO want a reasonable answer from Evernote.  You have given the best hope yet but I hope Evernote gives a real answer. 

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Here's something I haven't seen discussed here. Evernote touts that their (our) data will be encrypted at rest after moving to Google. But why must Google have the keys? Why can't only Evernote retain those keys? If Google disallows that for some technical reason, why can't Evernote encrypt just the subset of the server data that holds our data? It seems to me that would be a much better way to secure the data, and also people's worries!

Putting it another way.... People are understandably worried that their valuables will be exploited when changing landlords (who can enter the building at will). Why can't Evernote move safes into the building that contain those valuables, rather than move the valuables in plain sight?

It seems to me this would confer great advantages, confer trust, and maintain the cost and scalability benefits Evernote desires. If the answer is "no", then I'd like to understand why Evernote (or Google) insist that the data must be shared with Google.

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Thanks for clarifying a lot of things about this move. as long as Evernote is the one paying and making demands, I think we should be ok. I doubt Google would allow its AI to break into Evernote data and mine it for its purposes.

One fleeting thought, though, is whether or not Evernote is positioning for an IPO. It's cutting costs, raising prices and reaching out to other vendors for technical cooperation, the way I see it. This spruces up the company in the eyes of pontetial investors. Surely Evernote is a fantastic stock potentially and could draw lots of investors if it went public. Phil stepping down made me think this way first. Is an IPO on the way? That's an important thing to think about, because that means all different sorts of people will want to get their hands on Evernote and even demand down the road changes to its data protection policies so the data could be used to drive in more profits. I mean, financial investors don't care whether customers' data are protected as much as Evernote and its actual users. Their bottom line is their bottom line.

Just some food for thought in relation to this move to Google cloud servers.

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1 hour ago, egalite said:

egalite wrote: "One fleeting thought, though, is whether or not Evernote is positioning for an IPO. It's cutting costs, raising prices and reaching out to other vendors for technical cooperation, the way I see it. "

I'm not thinkng IPO, I'm thinking that it might be acquired by a large company. Evernote seems more like a product than a company. (Yes, I know this thread has drifted. It happens.)

 

 

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1 hour ago, Ares said:

 

I'd hate to see Google take it over completely. It would try to insert what it has into Evernote, including Google spreadsheet and so on. Google would gain a huge edge over Microsoft in this market if it acquired Evernote. Microsoft Office would start to wane and a tool like Evernote that is heavily Internet-centric would make Google superior in the future market of word processing, publication and private data creation. Imagine Google spreadsheet being inserted into Evernote, which lacks creativity and is very buggy in that area. Evernote's pretty bad with editing tools and Google could help in that area.

Still, I'm not sure I would want Google taking Evernote over, because it is so super aggressive in terms of mining user data and can be very prickly with its services. There's just not enough consistency. It has an overbearing stance over its users (and governments around the world as well). Whatever it does, it does with a superiority mentality over its subscribers. That's what bothers me.

If Evernote goes public, Google would try to gain the most stakes in it, but I'd like to see original founders still having a majority say in the operations. Get help where needed from Google, but don't let it eat up the product. IPO or not. That's my advice. (but then, evernote founders and major stake holders would still love to get their hands on money and opt out. After all, Evernote is somewhat limited in terms of its growth potential. Where would it go from now? It's got a huge pool of fastidious users who never stop demanding and the service fees aren't like the ones you pay for, say, Bloomberg terminals. They might want a new adventure so may just decide to give it to Google, which would dangle lots of money in their eyes no doubt)

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Ben,

I have one very important question for you.  I plan to move the bulk of my notes offline to a local folder.  However, I know that Evernote keeps history of each note (so we can go back to a previous version of that note).  Does that mean that even if I take my notes offline before 10/10, the history of said notes will still be transferred to Google's cloud platform?  Please advise...

Thanks, Cherice

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3 hours ago, Cherice B said:

I know that Evernote keeps history of each note (so we can go back to a previous version of that note).

My understanding is the Note History gets deleted when the notes are deleted

But for those with trust issues, can you believe anything they tell you :mellow:
And there's also the copies being kept by the US Govt:mellow:

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