Evernote, the memory app people forgot, is laying off all US staff

Enlarge / Evernote's self-conception of its brain-decluttering powers. Only one step is missing where many more users are paying for premium accounts than currently. Evernote

Evernote, the app that has sought for two decades to find a large paying audience for its "outside brain", is moving its operations to Italy, home of its parent company Bending Spoons. It's yet another big change for a company that's been useful, but not quite profitable, since at least 2004.

Bending Spoons, which acquired Evernote in November 2022, had laid off 129 employees in February 2023, saying Evernote had been "unprofitable for years" and "unsustainable in the long term". Regardless of the undetermined number of remaining employees in the United States (and Chile), the move was notified on June 23 and then the layoff on July 5, according to a company blog post. Staff members typically received 16 weeks' salary, one year of health insurance and a pro-rated performance bonus, as well as assistance for those working on visas.

“Our plans for Evernote are more ambitious than ever: going forward, a dedicated (and growing) team based in Europe will continue to assume ownership of the Evernote product,” wrote Francesco Patarnello, CEO of Evernote. "This team will be in an ideal position to leverage the vast expertise and strength of Bending Spoons' more than 400 employees, many of whom have worked full-time on Evernote since the acquisition."

Many people these days, especially younger people, may never have heard of Evernote, and that's part of the problem. Evernote's core pitch - an easy-to-access, user-friendly, searchable notebook that syncs anywhere - was new and ambitious when it made its public debut in 2004. Founder Stepan Pachikov, who had been developing the project for 2000, had also worked on handwriting recognition for both. Microsoft and Apple; Back then, an application that could keep everything paired between a Pocket PC and a Windows XP computer, without any cable issues, was new.

When iPhones, Android devices, and tablets arrived, Evernote appeared on them. As other apps appeared, Evernote almost always had official API integration with them.

Ars interviewed then-CEO Phil Libin in 2008 after Evernote launched an iPhone client, a new web UI, and a premium subscription. The company wanted to "minimize client version numbers" and instead bill Evernote as a service, an idea that would later resonate with legions of app developers. “We want people to be comfortable with Evernote as an external brain,” Libin explained. "Platforms and applications change, but users will always need access to the service."

Evernote was more flexible than the word names on a page suggested. The app gained traction with the context/markup/record driven Getting Things Done crowd, and Evernote welcomed them. Ars' Casey Johnston wrote in late 2013 about how Evernote helped her overcome an irrational hold-it-all mentality. At that time, there were note-taking apps in the ecosystems of Google (Keep), Apple (Notes), and Microsoft (OneNote), but Evernote's cross-platform nature and generous freemium model maintained its appeal. . I had a friend who at that time kept his Evernote password in a fireproof safe for his wife; it was a key part of how she could settle her estate if the unexpected happened.