Google Renames NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook - and Gemini 3.5 Is Coming to AI Pro
Three years after launching as Project Tailwind, the research tool moves fully under the Gemini umbrella - and its most powerful upgrade opens to a much larger subscriber base.
Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook on Thursday, pulling its three-year-old research tool fully under the Gemini brand. 30 million people already use it. Alongside the new name comes a blue/purple Gemini gradient logo, a preview of notebooks arriving in Google Search's AI Mode, and a timeline for the Gemini 3.5 + Antigravity upgrade to reach AI Pro subscribers - the first time the capability moves beyond Google's most expensive tier. Gemini Notebook now serves 600,000+ organizations as well.
As a standalone product, Gemini Notebook remains focused on research - Google's description hasn't changed the core pitch. But standalone no longer means isolated. Notebooks already appear in the Gemini app for chat organization, where sources sync automatically between the two surfaces. Adding notebooks to Google Search's AI Mode extends that presence further - a user searching for a topic could reference a notebook directly from the search results interface without switching apps.
What Gemini 3.5 + Antigravity Means for AI Pro Users
Google began rolling out the Gemini 3.5 and Antigravity upgrade for AI Ultra subscribers last month. Code runs inside the notebook. Each notebook gains a dedicated secure cloud computer that natively writes and executes code against the sources you upload, producing results grounded in your actual data rather than the model's general training knowledge. Google describes the output as "complex data analysis grounded in your sources" and "entirely new output formats and deeper analysis."
AI Pro users get this capability "over the coming weeks" on the web. AI Ultra kept it exclusive for roughly one month before Google widened access. Running code natively inside a notebook means a user can upload a spreadsheet or database export, ask Gemini Notebook to analyze it, and get results drawn from that specific file - rather than a summary built on what the model already knows about the topic. That distinction matters: the difference between a research tool that reads your sources and one that reasons from memory is large.
Three Names in Three Years - and the Simplest One Last
Launched at Google I/O 2023 as Project Tailwind, the tool became NotebookLM that June. "Gemini Notebook" is the third name in three years. "NotebookLM" embedded "language model" into the product name at a time when most users had no idea what a language model was or why they should care - a branding choice that made more sense for researchers than for the 30 million people who ended up actually using the product.
Gemini Spark for Mac and Gemini Notebook now share an explicit brand name, with the Gemini app serving as the connective layer across both. Google's broader AI lineup has been consolidating under the Gemini name for months - first Gemini Advanced, then Gemini Spark, and now Gemini Notebook - leaving fewer and fewer standalone product names across the suite. NotebookLM was the holdout. That changed Thursday. What comes next for the web interface and whether the Antigravity upgrade extends to the Gemini app's notebook view, Google has not yet confirmed.