Gemini Notebook

There are two things to consider: whether you have a foreign address with an account from another country, and whether the free quota will be enough.

Of six common requests for it from Russia, three run into a Google refusal, while presentations, alternatives, and free access work.

Search volume — Wordstat, Russia region, 07.09.2026

Who it is for. For people who read and compare many documents: students with lectures, lawyers with contracts, analysts with reports. The notebook answers only from your files, adding a citation to the relevant part of the source, and if you need a summary for the road, it creates a Russian podcast with two hosts.

Who else. For those who already have a foreign Google account for Gemini: the notebook is included in the same Google AI tiers, with no separate payment required. The free tier has its own generation quota, while Plus at $4.99 per month doubles it.

Who it is not for. For those in Russia with a Russian Google account: Google blocks access by country, and not everyone can get around it by changing their address alone. Also not for those who need finished slides in Google Slides or a desktop app: presentations here come as a video or PPTX file, and there is no desktop app.

A fit: section 4 takes you from changing your address to your first notebook. Looking for a Russia-based alternative? See the fork in section 8.

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This is a rename, not a relaunch: on 16.07.2026 Google gave the product the Gemini Notebook name and a new logo, while notebooks, the notebooklm.google.com address, and the apps stayed the same.

Two names coexist. The new name appears on the storefront, in app stores, and in English help, while Google’s Russian help as of 07.09.2026 is still called «NotebookLM Help», as are the German, French, and Japanese versions. Searches also stick to the old name: “notebook lm” and “notebooklm” get 25 thousand searches a month, versus 7.5 thousand for “gemini notebook” (Wordstat, 07.09.2026).

How it grew. The product began in 2023 as a Google Labs experiment with one source type; in three years it gained podcasts, video, web research, and its own cloud computer, and by the rename had more than 30 million users and 600 thousand organizations, according to Google. The people who invented document-based podcasts left Google for their own startup, Huxe, and shut it down on 22.05.2026 because podcasts from files had become a standard market feature.

Three panels: your files on the left, a chat in the center that answers only from them, and nine formats on the right that turn the same files into output with one click.

Sources. You can put PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, audio recordings, images, Google documents and spreadsheets, EPUB books, and, since 27.08.2026, books bought in Google Play Books into a notebook. Google allows up to 500,000 words or 200 MB per source, with no page limit; since 26.05.2026, Google Drive files update automatically in the notebook. You do not have to upload sources: you can find them instead. The search button in the panel offers quick search and Deep Research, which visits hundreds of sites and compiles a report with links.

Answers with citations. The chat answers from uploaded files, and every fact has a numbered citation that opens the relevant part of the source. Since 29.10.2025, the model sees the entire notebook through a one-million-token context window, and chat history is saved. Since 08.06.2026, it runs on Gemini 3.5 and Antigravity, and the notebook has gained a cloud computer that executes code for calculations using your data. As of 07.09.2026, this has rolled out to Ultra and some Workspace business subscriptions, with the rest following in turn.

Podcast. Audio Overview creates a two-host conversation from your files; in the app, you can join it by voice with the «Join» button. The hosts have spoken Russian since 29.04.2025, with the language switched manually in settings. Users praise the intonation and complain only about the length, while some titles still arrive in English.

Video and slides. Video Overview creates a video with slides and narration, which is what people call a «presentation»; a T—Zh reviewer got a six-minute video from their texts in July 2026. Since 20.03.2026, slides can be edited and exported to PDF and PPTX, infographics are drawn in ten styles, and cinematic Veo 3 video is available only on the Ultra tier and only in English.

Other formats. A relationship map, report, study flashcards, quiz, and a table exportable to Google Sheets are created from the same sources; the full list of nine formats is in the FAQ. You can share a notebook by link, and teachers can distribute notebooks to a class through Google Classroom.

What the vendor itself shows. The card header shows Google’s official screen recording from its rename post of 16.07.2026: a seven-source notebook completes an answer with citations; the disclaimer strip below the window is cropped out, while the window itself is intact. We did not test the notebook ourselves for this task; figures come from Google Help, the price list, app store listings, and third-party tests.

You can use it from Russia, but not directly: first the address, then the account.

What is visible from Russia. The promotional page notebook.google opens, but the notebook itself does not: from Moscow and St Petersburg nodes on 07.09.2026, notebooklm.google.com redirected to the same promotional page tagged location=unsupported, while nodes in Germany, the US, and Kazakhstan received a different response code, 301, from the same address at the same minute. There is no on-screen message, and the «Try» button loops back. The Roskomnadzor registry is not involved: its banned-domain export as of 07.09.2026 contains no notebook addresses, while a known blocked site from the Moscow node returned a timeout rather than a redirect.

Step 1. Change your Russian IP address to a foreign one: American, Dutch, or any other from Google’s list. The service is officially unavailable in Russia, so otherwise you will see notebook advertising instead of the notebook.

Step 2. Sign in to a Google account that Google considers to be from another country. Google determines the account country by its usual login location over a long period, not a one-time address, so T—Zh reviewers in July 2026 advise creating a new account without a Russian phone number. There is no guarantee: it works for one person but not their neighbor.

Step 3. Open notebooklm.google.com, click «Create notebook», and add your first file or link. No registration beyond a Google account is required; you can ask questions in Russian, and switch podcast and response languages in settings.

Apps. The mobile app launched on 19.05.2025 for iPhone and Android, but it is not in the Russian App Store: a store query by app ID on 07.09.2026 returned zero results, while “notebooklm” returns apps from other developers. It is not in RuStore either. The Google Play page opens with Russian settings and shows no notice, but Google decides installation by account country, and we did not test it with a Russian account.

Computer. There is no desktop app; the notebook lives in the browser, so searches for «download for PC» lead nowhere. Google has no official Chrome extension either; the extension store has only third-party ones.

Russian. The interface, help center, and Google Play description are translated, and Russian appears on the official list of 80 output languages alongside Ukrainian and Belarusian. Yet Google explains in Russian that your country is not on the list: in the Russian version of the country list, there is a blank between “Romania” and “Rwanda.”

Steps verified on 09/07/2026 using Google Help (countries and languages), the redirect chain, HTTP tests from Russian nodes with control sites, the domain registry, and app-store listings

There are no benchmarks for notebooks, so it does not say “best” here: there are Google’s figures, app-store listings, and one independent hallucination measurement.

Scale. On 07/16/2026, Google reported more than 30 million users and 600,000 organizations; in December 2024, it also said people had generated 350 years of podcasts in three months. The app has more than 10 million installs and 303,000 reviews with a 4.8 rating on Google Play; the Russian listing in the same store shows 4.6. In the US App Store, it has 4.86 from 59,000 ratings (09/07/2026).

Hallucinations. The only independent measurement found was conducted at Northwestern University in September 2025: across 300 documents about the TikTok court case, NotebookLM fabricated at least one claim in 13% of responses, versus 40% for ChatGPT and Gemini. The errors were not fabricated numbers, but overconfidence: the models attributed generalizations to sources that were not there. This is a preprint by one team on one task, collected before Gemini 3.

Google’s word. After moving to Gemini 3.5 in June 2026, Google compared the new version with its own previous one and found it won 65% of pairs across five dimensions, and 78% in finding sources online. This compares the product with itself, not competitors.

Demand. “Notebook lm” as two words gets 16.1 thousand searches per month, the joined “notebooklm” gets 8.9 thousand, the new “gemini notebook” gets 7.5 thousand, and the Cyrillic “noutbuk lm” gets 3.5 thousand (Wordstat, 09/07/2026). Part of the “gemini notebook download” tail goes to the Gemini assistant for computers, so demand for the notebook itself is slightly lower than the total. Its place among document tools is shown below the card title; the full tool ranking is on the general page.

The notebook itself is free; the shared Google AI subscription is paid, and it cannot officially be purchased from Russia.

Free. All you need is a Google account. Until 09/02/2026, the free tier used item limits: 100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook, 50 questions and 3 podcasts per day, and 10 deep-research requests per month. Since 09/02/2026, item limits have been replaced by a shared compute budget for questions, podcasts, and video, refreshing every five hours up to a weekly cap; Google does not publish the budget figures, and when it is exhausted, offers a “Generate later” button.

Tiers. The notebook has no separate subscription; it is included as a line item in Google AI tiers. According to Google’s 07/28/2026 price list, Plus costs $4.99 per month and doubles the budget, Pro at $19.99 raises it fourfold and removes the visible watermark from images and video, while Ultra at $99.99 or $199.99 provides five or twenty times more than Pro. The main $19.99 tier has remained since April 2024; only the levels around it have changed.

Watermark. Google always adds the invisible SynthID watermark to all images and video; only Pro and Ultra remove the visible one, while it remains on Plus. For residents of India, South Korea, and Vietnam, the visible mark is forcibly restored even on paid tiers.

Paying from Russia. Google One subscriptions are not officially supported in Russia, Google Play payments for Russian accounts have been paused since 03/10/2022, and checkout rejects Russian cards based on the bank’s country. Google’s price list still includes rubles, with Pro at 1,790 ₽ per month, but there is no checkout at that price. Based on their own summer 2026 price lists, intermediaries charge 20 to 27 percent on amounts from 1,300 to 5,000 ₽; we have not checked them ourselves, and those same intermediaries call ready-made accounts with subscriptions unreliable; common options are collected on the page “How to pay for AI from Russia”.

For business. In Google Workspace, the notebook is a separate line item: the entry plan provides three podcasts per day, while the rest provide twenty and five times more notebooks and sources. Google Cloud sells Gemini Enterprise from $21 per seat per month in the entry edition and from $30 in higher editions; the pay-as-you-go edition does not yet include the notebook.

Refund. The subscription renews automatically. If a charge fails, Google grants a seven-day grace period; you can cancel at any time, but refunds for the paid period are not available in most countries.

Three questions: whether Google trains on your files, who owns the podcasts and reports, and whom you sign the agreement with.

Training. The promise narrowed: in 2023, Google wrote that collected data never went into model training, while help as of 07.09.2026 says «they are not used unless you submit feedback». After you rate an answer, Google collects the prompt, sources, and response along with Gemini chats in the notebook, shows them to human reviewers after unlinking them from the account, and retains them for up to three years. The exception for Workspace work and school accounts is firm: their data is not read by people or used for training even after feedback.

Who owns the outputs. Google does not claim rights to generated content; this is stated twice in its terms. The limitation is there too: you may not share someone else's content without rights, and accounts are terminated for repeated copyright infringement. For books, Google chose the purchase route: only books bought in Google Play Books can be added to a notebook, and every notebook co-author needs their own copy.

Who can see the notebook. Until you share it, the notebook has a lock; sharing by link shows a people icon, while a public link shows a globe. In a shared notebook, only you can see your chat, and chat history can be deleted at any time. Deleted notes cannot be restored; Google states this directly in its help.

Who you contract with. Google LLC in Delaware, USA signs Google's terms for a user from Russia; California law applies subject to local-law provisions, while Google's Irish company serves only EU residents. You can use it from the age of consent in your country, but image generation, infographic styles, slide editing, and cinematic video are available only from age 18.

Incidents. We found no leaks, regulator fines, or lawsuits specifically involving the notebook over three years, only general claims from consultants that Google's policies are insufficient for medical and European data environments. There is only one country-specific rule in the product itself: a visible watermark is forcibly applied to residents of India, South Korea, and Vietnam.

The split is not in answer quality but at the door: Google's notebook is closed from Russia, while its Russian neighbor opens without a foreign address, but allows half as many documents and counts questions as individual monthly units.

Alisa Pro. A Yandex service, formerly called Neuroexpert; when it launched on 03.04.2025, Yandex itself named NotebookLM its main competitor. It works the same way: upload documents, ask questions, and receive answers with citations from the files. The free tier gives 10 projects with 25 documents and 50 questions per month, supports 23 file types, is included in the Russian software registry, and offers companies data storage on their own servers. Choose Alisa Pro if you are in Russia with a Russian account; choose Google's notebook if you have a foreign address and need podcasts, video, and fifty sources per project.

Projects in assistants. Perplexity, ChatGPT and Claude can organize files into projects and answer questions about them, and Yandex named them alongside Google's notebook. The difference is what each product is built for: in assistants, a project is a secondary chat feature; in the notebook, answering from your files is the whole product, with citations, podcasts, and video from the same sources. The corporate neighbor with a stub in our catalog, Copilot 365, builds notebooks from company documents within Microsoft 365.