I started using Google Notebook around 2008. Once I received a notice that it will shut down, I switched to Evernote around 2012. Unlike Google, note-taking is the central business of Evernote, I thought I would be fine. I was wrong. Evernote became terrible over time. Then I heard about a service called Notion. I deliberated and decided to wait out. Turns out a new cool kid on the block showed up soon enough. It was called Roam Research. They had such an enthusiastic fan following that they decided not to even have a freemium model. I was tired of moving notes from one proprietary system to another. And decided not to use either Notion or Roam research.

Finally, in 2020, I came across Obsidian and decided to make the move. Obsidian is a simple Markdown-based note-taking application. The best thing is that it does not store your notes. You can store your notes on your favorite cloud provider. And if Obsidian ever shuts down, your notes are not only readable in a plain-text editor, but also can be modified/viewed by a gazillion other Markdown editors. Obsidian isn’t as fancy as Notion with dynamic views or anything like that. But it gets the job done. And I can be certain that my notes will be accessible for decades to come.