Google Notebook, the new product Google was being a bit coy about last week, is now up and running, and I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. When some screenshots surfaced last week it wasn't clear just how Google Notebook would work, but luckily my initial suspicions were confirmed: Google Notebook is powered by a Firefox extension an addon for Firefox and IE. Basically, Google Notebook is similar to the ScrapBook extension, but combined with an Ajaxy web service. It lets you grab web pages, text excerpts, and images and save them to Notebooks. The extension's main interface is a box that pops up in the lower-right corner when you click on "Open Notebook" in your status bar or right-click on something and click on "Note this." When you do so, an editing field pops up where you can type anything you want or drag-and-drop text and images to it. If you've made a selection on a web page when the box pops up, it will automatically be added to your new note. From this interface you can also see the contents of all of your notebooks, create new notebooks and sections heading, and edit previous notes. The little box also links to Google Notebook's "full page view," i.e. the full-fledged Ajaxy web service I mentioned. Anyone who has spent some time with Gmail, Google Calendar, or Google Reader will feel right at home with the interface. The web interface is like a bigger version of the extension's interface, allowing you to delete notes, do more editing (the extension only has buttons for bold and italic, but the web interface has full-fledged rich text support), rearrange notes, and even entire sections by drag-and-drop, and change your sharing preferences (here's an example of a somewhat eclectic shared notebook). You can also select multiple notes using the familiar Shift and Ctrl keys to do batch deletes or moves.

I think that people will find a lot of different uses for Google Notebook. It could, of course, be used as its name suggests, for taking notes and doing research. Others will use it to make collections of links to share, e.g. teachers who want to give their students an annotated list of resources. It might also make a nice way to keep a wishlist. Some will use it to keep track of bookmarks, but it really isn't suited (and doesn't aim) to replace the likes of del.icio.us. Google Notebook lets you search your notes, and having separate notebooks and sub-headings will be enough organization for some people, but the lack of any kind of tagging make it poorly suited for managing a hodge-podge of a few bookmarks. Google Notebook does have a social aspect, though, in the form of a not-yet-implemented global search for searching everyone's publicly-shared notes, but it is primarily a personal tool like Google Calendar. Currently Google Notebook is missing a couple of things that I believe are crucial for its success, namely RSS feeds and an open API, but given Google's track record, I think it's fair to assume that these are on the way and I can't wait to see what people can accomplish with them. I'm also still expecting Google to integrate Google Notebook into Google Toolbar at some point, but since it still lives under the Google Labs banner ("Labs" is the new "Beta"!) they may wait until it's a more proven product.

[Thanks, Bill!]