The Problem With Google Bookmark Manager

Looks good on desktop…

A little over two weeks ago, I wrote a post about organizing your bookmarks. Google released Google Bookmark Manager last week. Of course they did. Once I find a system I like there’s a new one out. It seemed like a really interesting approach. It is a Google Chrome plugin, which usually I don’t like because of privacy implications. But let’s face it, I’m already using the Google browser so that’s kind of shot. You can search your bookmarks with the power of Google. If you don’t want to organize them, Google will automatically place them in folders for you (and it works well). All you have to do is install the plugin, click the little star like you normally do, and let the rest take care of itself. But there’s just one big problem…

Google Bookmarks doesn’t integrate well with Android.

A mess on Android.

Yup, you heard me right. When I heard that bookmarks worked across all platforms I took that to mean “any platform that can run chrome.” So your desktop and any iOS or Android device. I figured my Windows Surface RT was completely out (and it is). But I thought I’d still give this a try because it would work on everything else. I started adding my bookmarks to Bookmark Manager from my desktop. I saw the folders, and they were done well. Awesome. Then I opened Chrome on Android….and was confronted with an unorganized list of bookmarks. Folders I manually create will show in Chrome on iOS and Android. But not auto-generated folders. There’s also no way to search these bookmarks. In other words, they work just like regular bookmarks.

Google has a history of releasing products before they’re really ready. (I’m looking at you Chromecast.) So it is possible these bookmark features will eventually make their way to iOS and Android. I’d also love to be able to access my bookmarks from a webpage, at least as a read only option. Then it would be truly available on “any device.” Google doesn’t have a ton of competition in this space, and the competition is tricky to find. (Googling “bookmarking sites” comes up with social media sharing services, you have to search “bookmark manager.”) But as I said in my post a few weeks ago, I need my bookmarks to follow me across devices. And Google Bookmark Manager just does not do this well. Not yet anyway.

If you use bookmarks primarily on a desktop, laptop, or Chromebook then Google Bookmark Manager may work very well for you. For now though, I’m sticking with my Pocket + Evernote solution. It fits my use case. Although reading about Google Bookmark Manager did lead me to Diigo which now has my attention as well (the work of a blogger is never done)….