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I rarely get attached to web applications – it’s just not in my nature. But one application I have come to love if Google Notebook where I can import bookmarks, add notes and organise my research and resources.

So I have to report that I am officially heartbroken – as today I saw an announcement that Google Notebook will no longer be supported.

Here is what they had to say in on the Google Notebook blog:

Starting next week, we plan to stop active development on Google Notebook. This means we’ll no longer be adding features or offer Notebook for new users. But don’t fret, we’ll continue to maintain service for those of you who’ve 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.

There is an outcry of feedback from users of Notebook – and I am guessing most Google Notebook users won’t actually know about the change.

Google does go on to mention other applications people can explore – but it appears none have the breadth of functionality or ease of use from the comments made by Notebook fans.

All of us have to make changes in our business and change is never easy, but I was surprised to see that no one from the Google Notebook teams seems to have replied back to the comments on the blog post, nor was there a notification to people as they opened up Notebook today, and there is no guidance on how people might want to consider exporting content – yes people can continue to use it but the functionality with the Firefox plug in will be a big missing.

When communicating changes especially something that has not been foreseen to clients and customers and employees, we all need to consider how to support them through transition without impacting customer loyalty or reputation.

The thing with Notebook is that it’s a free service, probably not Google’s most popular product or even widely known of and as consumers and users of the service we have little influence (I probably should say no influence) on the decision.

Reading the comments on the Google Notebook blog however, you can see that it’s making some people think about whether they should be so reliant on free Google applications moving forward and has dented the confidence some people have in using Google for cloud computing.