Evernote lays off most of its US workers and will relocate its base of operations to Europe

Evernote, the once popular note-taking app, which was first founded in 2004 in Northern California, is going through some major changes. Late on Saturday, the company's official blog stated that most of its US workers, and also most of its employees in Chile, will be laid off. The blog post did not give a specific number of its workers who will be affected by this move.

In its blog post, Evernote stated it will offer the laid-off employees 16 weeks of salary, along with a year of health insurance, and a performance bonus.

The Italy-based Bending Spoons officially acquired Evernote in early 2023 for an unknown amount. In this weekend's blog post, it stated that future Evernote development will be relocated to Europe. It added:

This team will be in an ideal position to leverage the extensive expertise and strength of the 400-plus workforce at Bending Spoons, many of whom have been working on Evernote full-time since the acquisition.

While Evernote was once a very popular note-taking app and service, its popularity has been cut down by lots of competition. That includes efforts from Microsoft which has beefed up its OneNote app, and more recently launched its Loop online collaboration service in a public preview version.

After Bending Spoons officially closed the deal to acquire Evernote in early January, it confirmed the layoffs of 123 Evernote team members in February. In April, it announced some major price increases on its monthly and annual plans. For example, its annual Evernote Personal subscription price went up from $69.99 to $129.99.

In the same blog post where it announced price increases, Evernote also mentioned some new features it was adding. That included Real-Time Editing, which allows users to make changes to a note on a smartphone and see those changes made on the Evernote laptop app.

It also announced it was adding AI-based features, including AI Note Cleanup, which "cleans up" any unwanted content, and AI Search where users can ask questions about their notes and receive answers, again based on their note. That latter feature is due in the second half of 2023.