Evernote, an early App Store star, is leaving the United States and relocating to Europe

Note-taking and task management app Evernote is moving its operations out of the U.S. also, has laid off the vast majority of its stateside employees. The majority of Evernote’s employees in the United States and Chile have been let go, the company announced yesterday. The majority of Evernote’s operations are now being moved to Europe by the Italian parent company Bending Spoons.

Evernote’s “operations will be transitioned to Europe” due to the “significant boost in operational efficiency that will come as a consequence of centralizing operations in Europe,” according to Luca Ferrari, CEO of Bending Spoons, the company that purchased Evernote in November.

The move is meant to “boost operational efficiency and make the most of the Bending Spoons employer brand, which is extremely strong in Europe,” according to the company.

Bending Spoons gained Evernote in November last year, and at that point, Evernote CEO was cited as saying the deal would assist the organization with work on building new features, using Bending Spoons’ “proven app expertise and wide range of proprietary technologies.” A representative from Bending Spoons stated at the time that the company’s unprofitable nature was “unsustainable in the long term” when it laid off 129 employees in February.

129 employees were laid off in a round less than six months ago, and Bending Spoons stated at the time that the company had been “unprofitable for years.” At one time, Evernote was viewed as the best note-taking app that anyone could hope to find for cell phones. However, efforts to expand the app’s capabilities were unsuccessful, resulting in layoffs at times. Indeed, even before then, Google had released a significant rival in Google Keep.

Notion launched in 2018 as Evernote failed, and other tech giants like Microsoft and Apple improved their own note-taking applications. And today’s report that Evernote will leave the United States was the culmination of everything. Ferrari of Bending Spoons stated, “Our plans for Evernote are as ambitious as ever: Going forward, a growing, dedicated team based in Europe will continue to assume ownership of the Evernote product.”

Evernote said in a declaration yesterday its employees were told on July 5th that the cutbacks would occur and has offered the employees 16 weeks of severance, a performance bonus, and as long as a year of health insurance coverage.

Evernote became one of the first famous note-taking apps when it launched in 2008, however has battled since the mid-2010s as other, comparative applications started to take some of its thunder and the organization has found itself bogged down in wrecks through its own effort. Evernote somehow made it out of its “death spiral” of 2016, a year in which it raised prices and was forced to renege on a controversial privacy policy that previously gave no option to opt out of employees looking at users’ content. It also had to deal with complaints about the app’s bugs and lost several employees.