Stopping development on Google Notebook

Posted by Raj Krishnan, Product Manager, Google Notebook

At Google, were 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.

Starting next week, we plan to stop active development on Google Notebook. This means well no longer be adding features or offer Notebook for new users. But dont fret, well continue to maintain service for those of you whove already signed up. As part of this plan, however, we 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.

If you havent used Notebook in the past, we invite you to explore the other Google products that offer Notebook-like functionality. Here are a few examples, all of which are being actively improved and should meet your needs:

• SearchWiki - We recently launched a feature on Search that will let you re-rank, comment, and personalize your search results. This is useful when youve 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 youre 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.

While its hard for us to make this announcement we believe its the right decision for our users in the long run. And were excited about all the new ideas we have for Docs, SearchWiki, Bookmarks and other products.

UPDATE, January 22.
Since this post went up, weve received lots of feedback. In particular, many of you seem concerned about what will happen to the information and data youve already put into Notebook. So wed like to reiterate and clarify a few things.

First, since were 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 dont lose it. Finally, if youre 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.

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