Google Notebook First Look

Google Notebook is starting to go live as of this writing. Thanks to ZDNet for the link to the login page. Here's an initial look. The overview page can be found here.

Google Notebook, the web copy says, makes it easy to collect web research of all kinds – from planning a vacation to researching a school paper to buying a car. You simply clip and gather information even while you're browsing the web. All your notes belong to Google. To clip information you need to use the mini Google Notebook. This unfortunately requires a browser extension. Hmm, why not integrate this into the Google Toolbar?

Once your notes are in Google Notebook you can make them publicly available. Then all of these public notes can be searched from this search page. According to the FAQ it takes two days for your notebooks to get indexed.

The Google Notebook interface itself is very straightforward. You create a notebook. Then each notebook can feature rich text notes. You then have the option to print or share notebooks. All of your notebooks are naturally searchable.

Google Notebook is straightforward and easy to use but I am disappointed in it. I don't like that the mini Google Notebook requires a browser plug-in. I don't see why it can't work the same way Google Talk works inside Gmail. This makes Google Notebook virtually useless when I am using someone else's computer.

As Google grows I have been noticing that they are producing less winners. Google Trends, for example, is a great tool. But others like this one and Google Co-op are duds from the get-go.

Here are some screens I took of Google Notebook ...

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