Update (Mar 20): Google has officially launched Keep as a web and Android app.

Original story is below.

Google is apparently getting ready challenge Evernote and other digital note-taking services with its own alternative called Google Keep. The unannounced service was spotted over the weekend at drive.google.com/keep/ but the site was promptly pulled offline and remains so at the time of writing.

The folks at Android Police managed to take it for a quick spin and grab a few screenshots, however. According to the site Google Keep picks off where the axed Google Notebook left off, with support for notes, check lists, and photo clipping. The user interface is pretty sparse. Notes appear either as a list or in a thumbnail view, with options for color-coding, or archiving them to send them to a section at the bottom of your list.

As you'd expect from Google there's also search functionality, and if / when the service goes live, you can probably look forward to integration with a range of web services from the company. In fact, this isn't the first time clues about an upcoming Google Keep product have surfaced. Back in July 2012, Google accidentally included a screenshot in an official Google+ post that showed a "save to Google Keep" label.

The latter could work similar to Evernote's web clipper or perhaps as an alternative to read later services like Pocket and Instapaper which strip all distractions from articles so you can focus on the text and relevant images.

Android Police notes that an Android app is supposedly in the works but no signs of that have surfaced yet.