NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook

Google has officially taken NotebookLM — its AI-powered study and research helper — and slapped on a shinier, more on-brand name: Gemini Notebook. On paper, this is a straightforward glow-up. Google says the tool, first shown off as Project Tailwind in 2023, is now used by 30 million people and 600,000 organizations, and it’s getting new tricks too, like doing deeper analysis and showing up more across Google apps, including Search. But in the comment section? The real action was less “wow, cool features” and more “finally, that weird name is gone.”

The loudest reaction was pure branding relief. One commenter said NotebookLM always felt awkward next to Google’s Gemini empire, while another joked it sounded “a little scholastic,” which is a hilariously brutal way to say it felt like homework software. One person even mourned the lost chaos timeline where Google might have called it “Bard Notebook,” a name that feels one part nostalgia, one part cursed artifact. And then there was the most relatable winner of the thread: the person behind Notebook.ai, who is “very, very, very excited” that confused users may finally stop emailing them for help. Incredible collateral damage from a naming choice.

Not everyone was cheering, though. One skeptic immediately went full doom mode, predicting Google’s next move is to monetize every pixel, result and second into advertising placement. Classic comment-section whiplash: one side says the rename finally makes sense, the other says it’s the beginning of the ad apocalypse. Meanwhile, another user skipped the branding drama entirely to ask the most useful question in the room: are there any other AI tools like this for learning? In other words, even amid the jokes, people are still very interested in what this thing actually does.