Image: Evernote
Evernote is getting a new owner. In an announcement on Wednesday, the note-taking app announced that it’s getting acquired by the Italian mobile developer Bending Spoons in a transaction that’s set to take place early next year.
As part of the acquisition, Evernote will join Bending Spoons’ existing lineup of apps, which includes the video editing app Splice and the AI image enhancement app Remini. Evernote CEO Ian Small says the deal will let the company take advantage of Bending Spoons’ “proven app expertise and wide range of proprietary technologies” so it can work on building new features.
“We are grateful to our customers and employees, and are excited to team-up with Bending Spoons,” Small said in a statement. “This strategic acquisition means that there will be extensive, accelerated improvements across our Teams, Professional, Personal, and Free offerings, which is fantastic news for lovers of Evernote everywhere.”
Evernote, which launched in 2008, rose to popularity as one of the first note-taking apps. However, the app struggled to remain relevant in recent years with the introduction of similar productivity apps like Notion. It also came under fire in 2016 when it nearly implemented a new privacy policy that would allow employees to look at your content.
While the company ultimately backtracked on the policy, other factors helped steer some users away from the platform, including the constraints it put on the free version that limits the usage of the app to only two devices. There have also been numerous complaints about Evernote’s upgrade to version 10 in 2020, as the app removed several features and many users reported performance issues across devices that Evernote is still struggling with today.