Google has launched a new project for those of us who have more trouble keeping physical documents, such as bills and receipts, organized. Called Stack, the project is born out of Area 120, an in-house incubator at Google, which shares some similarities with Microsoft Garage, meaning it's a division where members of the company can come up with out-of-the-box ideas and turn them into products.
Stack is a fairly simple concept. Users can take pictures of whatever documents they have at hand, be it bills, receipts, and even IDs, and then that information is automatically stored and organized in different categories based on what's written on it. Not only that, but Stack can also pull certain information from those documents to make them easier to find.
For example, a bill or receipt that features a company logo or name will add that name to the title of the document. Data such as due dates and amount due are also pulled from the document and made more easily discoverable, plus you can search for text inside documents if you're looking for something specific, like the price of a single item in a receipt.
in addition to storing all this data on your phone, Stack can also sync with Google Drive, making things easily accessible on any device, even if you stop using the app. For security, you can also require biometric authentication every time you unlock the app. One aspect that may worry users is privacy, especially when it comes to scanning IDs and having them synced in the cloud.
If you're interested in taking Stack for a spin, you'll need to be living in the U.S. and have an Android phone, at least for now. There's no word on the potential for expansion for Stack at this time. You can find the app on the Play Store.
