Google Announces stop of development on Google Notebook

Raj Krishnan, Product Manager, Google Notebook said in a blog post on 14 January 2009, "At Google, we're constantly working to innovate and improve our products so people can easily find and manage information. At times though, we have to decide where to focus our efforts and which technologies we expect will yield the most benefit to users in the long run."

With this in mind active development on Google Notebook was scheduled to stop from 19 January 2009.  This means Google will no longer be adding features or offer Notebook for new users.

Does this mean that existing users will lose their saved notebooks?  No, they will continue to maintain service for those who've already signed up. However, Google will no longer support the Notebook Extension, but as always users who have already signed up will continue to have access to their data via the web interface at http://www.google.com/notebook.

So where to from here?  There are several options, including some other Google products that offer Notebook-like functionality.  Here a few examples that Google recommend you explore:

• SearchWiki - We recently launched a feature on Search that will let you re-rank, comment, and personalize your search results. This is useful when you've found some results on Google Search that were really perfect for your query. You can read about how to use SearchWiki in this blog post.
  
• Google Docs - If you're trying to jot down some quick notes, or create a document that you can share with others, check out Google Docs.
  
• Tasks in Gmail - For a lightweight way to generate a todo list or keep track of things, we recently launched Tasks in Gmail Labs.
  
• Google Bookmarks - For a tool that can help you remember web pages that you liked and access them easily, take a look at Google Bookmarks. You can even add labels to your bookmarks to better organize and revisit them.
  

An update to their announcement was made on 22 January acknowledging the concerns many users expressed in over 730 comments to the original post.  Which stated, "many of you seem concerned about what will happen to the information and data you've already put into Notebook. So we'd like to reiterate and clarify a few things.

• First, since we're maintaining the service via http://www.google.com/notebook, every single notebook and all the existing features of the web interface will still be available. Those of you that already use the web interface should see no change in how the product behaves.
• Second, we guarantee that you will always have access to and control of your notebooks; we completely appreciate the effort and knowledge that your data represents and are committed to making sure you don't lose it.
• Finally, if you're looking for a way to easily export your information out of the product, the feature already exists. In the upper right corner of the web interface, under the "Tools" menu, there are two export options: "Export to Google Docs", and "Export as HTML".
  

We hope this addresses some of your concerns. Thanks for all your feedback and suggestions."

Are there alternatives not hosted by Google?  Yes, there are many.  My recommendation is Evernote.  As previous readers of this blog will know it is explained as your second brain and you can access it using Mac, Windows,  iPhone or other web enabled mobiles or PDAs using Windows Mobile.

The developers at Evernote have even released a Google Notebook importer that makes it incredibly simple to bring your content into Evernote.

For more information: http://s.evernote.com/googleimport