Why Google Should Turn Blogger into an Evernote Competitor

Probably many of you have used some form of a cloud or markdown based note-taking tool like Evernote, OneNote, Google Keep, Notion, Obsidian, Bear, etc. I've been a big fan of note-taking tools since my grad school days about 7 years ago but have found each of them with various gaps that didn't satisfy everything I wanted. I started initially with Microsoft OneNote but just didn't like the feel of its old, bloated clunky interface - so I jumped to Evernote.

At the time, Evernote was the new kid on the block -- an awesome tool with good organizational structure, tags, nice note formatting and full cross-device syncing (I use Windows, iOS and MacOS which was really helpful when using Evernote). However, some years ago, Evernote put up a paywall on the max number of devices you could use (they restricted it to 2, I use 4). That was a big issue for me and I was about to pay the monthly fee until I discovered Google Keep. 

At first, Keep seemed way too simple to use as a significant note-taking tool - no formatting, no cross-linking....but, integrated directly into Chrome -- simple and full cross-device support with no limits (other than tag and note length). As I used it more, I started to see how its simplicity started to benefit me. I always get stuck on the 'look and feel' of digital output and Evernote had me focusing too much on formatting over content while just trying to take notes. The real tipping point for me with Keep, however, was being able to combine a group of notes to a single Google Doc output and OCR of both cursive and printed text. That let me take multiple Keep notes of fragmented ideas, grabs of web pages, short content and focus them into one output for final editing.

Blogger as a Note-Taking App

Where am I going with this, you might ask? Well, much of my final output - sometimes known as evergreen notes  - was ending up in Google Docs. That's great for a paper or published article - but not for deeper note-taking, learning and, of course, blog posts! Just copying and pasting Google Docs into Blogger is messy and the html output is bloated. But, if I could export multiple Keep notes to a draft Blogger post - now, something better than Evernote or OneNote is starting to become apparent.

Ok, as I thought about this I could see that Blogger is really just a couple of steps away from being a full-fledged Evernote and OneNote replacement. It has all of the necessary formatting features, tags, media embedding, templates, public or private, sharing, notes by email, etc. All Google would need to do at a minimum is to add cross-linking between posts, note taking templates, folder groupings and re-release their Blogger mobile app. Viola! You now have a full fledged deep note-taking environment as a serious note-taking competitor. 

Of course some nice-to-haves would be writing notes in markdown, adding latex for math, Keep integration and import and export of notes - but, those could wait as future features. Overall, I believe this would be a great way to revitalize Blogger in Google ecosystem.

Hey Google!! Are you listening??