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Why you can't trust the cloud: Google shutters Notebook
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Posted by David Dunham
Jan 19, 2009 at 05:07 PM
IMO the headline is a little extreme—it’s not shuttered at all: “we’ll continue to maintain service for those of you who’ve already signed up.”
Still, it’s definitely a wake-up call for cloudies.
Oh, and there’s this little thing called airplane travel. Some of us like access to our notes whenever we need them…
Posted by Gorski
Jan 19, 2009 at 05:20 PM
Yes, but they’re not accepting new users, which to me says that they will eventually be shutting it down completely. When you close up an old house, you close the shutters, but you don’t tear the house down right away.
Posted by Tom S.
Jan 20, 2009 at 02:21 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Two comments:
>
>#1 To me, Google Notebook’s demise _isn’t_ reason enough not to trust
>the cloud (though there may be other valid ones). We all have seen the end of
>development of many programs we used to rely upon, but that was no reason to stop using
>software altogether. As far as I can tell, all material entered into GN will remain
>accessible, but there will be no new features added. What I would suggest is that this
>case (as many others) is a good reason not to rely on ‘free’ services alone.
This is true. Two thoughts to add to yours:
A) The application needed improvement in order to reach its full potential. I actually started using it (again, not for anything important) because I expected it to eventually be something superior. In truth, it looked to me like it could possibly be a free, online One Note. It obviously will never get there now.
B) What made this application so convenient for many of us was the Firefox plugin that interfaced with it. This will also not be updated. When Firefox went from v. 2 to v. 3, it broke many of the plugins, including this one. When it goes from v. 3 to v. 4, I think we can expect the same, probably with no fix this time.
Tom S.
Posted by Tom S.
Jan 20, 2009 at 02:23 PM
David Dunham wrote:
>Oh, and there’s this little thing called
>airplane travel. Some of us like access to our notes whenever we need them…
Syncing with Google Gears should really help with this. It hadn’t been made compatible with GN but it also has a lot of potential for us “cloudies”. :)
Tom S.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 23, 2009 at 08:34 AM
Evernote has been quick to jump on the Google replacement bandwagon, providing an import route:
http://blog.evernote.com/2009/01/22/google-notebook-import-2/
This is actually a reason that you _can_ trust the cloud: if there’s a sufficient interest for an obsolete product, somebody else will probably provide an alternative. I have seen this happen in social networking sites and online storage spaces, with alternatives even being promoted on the original website.
alx