The official Google Bookmarks website now shows a banner at the top highlighting its upcoming demise. “After September 30th, 2021, Google Bookmarks will no longer be supported. To save your bookmarks, click on “Export bookmarks,” the banner reads. So if you have ever used this service, you now have just over two months to take your bookmarks out of it save them elsewhere.
Google Bookmarks is shutting down in September
Google Bookmarks is a standalone service that works as a cross-device bookmarking tool. Despite that name, it has nothing to do with your Chrome bookmarks. It lets you bookmark links so you can access them from any device logged in with the same account. However, since all major web browsers now offer bookmarking tools and sync them across devices, Google Bookmarks doesn’t hold much significance today. Many people don’t even know such a Google service exists. Perhaps that’s why the company is killing it and doing so rather silently. Despite 16 years of existence, the service has no mobile app, neither a logo. A quick look at the official website gives you an idea of how Google has been treating it in recent years. The UI is blatantly outdated and the company has put no effort to update it. Quite clearly, Google Bookmarks will not be missed by many when it shuts down in September. However, despite being not integrated with any other Google services, a few of them do use this bookmarking tool. As noted by the folks over at KilledbyGoogle, Google Bookmarks stored some or all of your Google Maps’ “Starred” locations. The two servicers apparently still sync. This led to speculations that its demise could also mean you’ll lose your Starred locations on Google Maps. However, that won’t be the case. Google has confirmed to 9t05Google that this impending shutdown will not affect Maps. “Starred Locations in Google Maps aren’t going anywhere. All of your starred places remain intact, and you’ll still be able to save places to a list just like you always have,” the company said in a statement. Perhaps Google has already made arrangements to transition the Starred location list away from it. Nonetheless, if you see some stuff in your Google Bookmarks account, you can click “export bookmarks” in the sidebar to export them.
