We’re fond of apps that let us save items for offline reading. Pocket, Instapaper, Evernote — they occupy our day. It seems Google may be working on a similar service, allowing us to save bookmarks as private or shared via a public folder. Unoficially named “Stars”, the service could debut soon.
Initially found by a Software Developer named Florian Kiersch, messages in the code suggest this is in late stage development. Messages such as “Thank you for dogfooding Google Stars!” suggest Google is already seeding the project to employees. Dogfooding is the process by which Google employees are allowed to test beta products, giving feedback and info along the way.
According to Kiersch, Stars is like a mixture of many read-it-later services like Pocket, with notes like “Smart lists make it easy for you to re-find your stars by automatically grouping similar items by type – images, articles, videos, and more” and “Try starring some items on the web and adding them to this folder!” hinting at its utility.
Additionally, there is mention of a Chrome extension — again, a lot like Pocket or Evernote. It could be a new service, or the progression of Keep. There is an expectation we’d see this at Google I/O this year, and that could be the case. Dogfooding suggests it’s in late development, and the myriad of notes and code suggest Stars is more than a project. In checking out all Florian has shared with us (“Use the star in the address bar to save anything across the web”), it seems as though Google is trying to capture the offline reading ecosystem as well as your time online.
Source: Florian Kiersch
Debuted in 2014…EOL in 2015. Such is Google who cares little what the end user likes or not. There have been so many Google services I’ve loved to only have disappear at Google’s whim. Therefor, I have zero interest in establishing anything on Stars.
Unoficially = Unofficially