Back to reviews
Notebooks in Gemini

Notebooks in Gemini

Google brings project-scoped AI workspaces to Gemini — chats, docs, files in one space

Google has launched Notebooks in Gemini, a new organizational layer that groups related chats, files, and project context into a single persistent workspace. Unlike standard Gemini conversations that exist in isolation, Notebooks let users create project-scoped containers — similar in spirit to Claude's Projects feature — where AI context, uploaded documents, and conversation history persist and accumulate over time. The feature integrates with Google Workspace, allowing users to attach Google Docs, Sheets, Drive files, and Gmail threads directly to a Notebook. Gemini can then be queried across all attached materials in a unified way, making it useful for long-running research, client projects, or any work that spans multiple sessions and document types. Notebooks debuted at #2 on Product Hunt with 181 upvotes on launch day. This positions Gemini more directly against Claude's Projects and ChatGPT's memory-augmented workspaces. For Google Workspace users in particular, the tight Drive and Docs integration gives Notebooks a material advantage — it's the only AI workspace with native access to the full Google productivity stack. Enterprise buyers who've already committed to Workspace will find the feature immediately useful without any additional setup.

Panel Reviews

The Builder

The Builder

Developer Perspective

Ship

The Google Workspace integration is the story here — native Drive, Docs, and Gmail context inside an AI workspace is something Claude Projects and ChatGPT can't match out of the box. For teams already deep in Google's ecosystem, this is a no-brainer upgrade to their AI workflow.

The Skeptic

The Skeptic

Reality Check

Skip

Claude Projects and Notion AI already do this better in many respects. Google has a history of launching polished features and then abandoning them — Stadia, Inbox by Gmail — so long-term commitment is a real concern. The feature is also locked behind Gemini Advanced for power usage.

The Futurist

The Futurist

Big Picture

Ship

Persistent, project-scoped AI workspaces are the natural evolution of how knowledge workers will interact with AI — not ephemeral chats but living project brains. Google pushing Notebooks mainstream normalizes this interaction model and accelerates adoption across the massive Workspace install base.

The Creator

The Creator

Content & Design

Ship

For creative projects spanning multiple briefs, reference files, and iteration rounds, having a Notebook that holds all of it in one AI-queryable space is a real quality-of-life improvement. Especially useful for agencies running multiple client projects simultaneously in Google Docs.

Community Sentiment

*AI-estimated based on web search. Not scraped from social platforms.
Overall575 mentions
59% positive28% neutral13% negative
Hacker News120 mentions
55%30%15%

Comparison to Claude Projects and persistent memory features

Reddit185 mentions
62%25%13%

Google Workspace native integration as key differentiator

Twitter/X270 mentions
58%30%12%

Competition with Claude Projects and ChatGPT memory