Evernote has laid off most of its US staff and will move most operations to Europe

The note-taking company Evernote has laid off most of its employees in the United States and Chile the company announced yesterday. Now the Italian parent company Bending Spoons is taking most of Evernote’s activities to Europe.

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

Bending Spoons acquired Evernote last November, and at the time the Evernote CEO was quoted as saying the deal would help the company build new features using Bending Spoons’ “proven app expertise and broad range of proprietary technologies.” The company previously laid off 129 employees in February, with a Bending Spoons representative saying TechCrunch at the time the company’s unprofitable nature was “unsustainable in the long term.”

Evernote said in its announcement yesterday that its employees were told on July 5 that the layoffs would happen, and has offered employees 16 weeks of severance pay, a performance bonus and up to a year of health insurance coverage.

Evernote became one of the first popular note-taking apps when it launched in 2008, but has struggled since the mid-2010s when other similar apps began to steal some of its thunder, and the company has found itself stuck in its own mess making. After weathering complaining about the app’s bugs and losing several executives, Evernote somehow emerged from its “death spiral” in 2016, a year in which it raised prices and was forced to abandon a controversial privacy policy that previously gave no option to opt out, that employees looked at users’ content.

We’ve reached out to both Evernote and Bending Spoons for comment.