My main reason for switching to Zoho was driven by three core principles: moving away from US-based products, keeping my data within India as much as possible, and supporting Indian companies. With that intent, I’ve been actively de-Googling my digital life and I’m already about 90% there.

However, I’ve run into an issue with Zoho Notebook on Android that feels contradictory to this goal. Despite being a note-taking app, it appears to rely on Google Play Store and Google Play Services. I have both disabled on my device, and in that state Zoho Notebook simply does not work. As a customer, the natural assumption is that the app depends on these Google services at the backend. Even if this dependency is denied, the practical reality is that I must keep Google Play Services and the Play Store enabled to use Zoho Notebook.

What makes this more surprising is that other Zoho apps—like Zoho Mail and a few others—work perfectly fine without Google services. So it’s unexpected that a basic note-taking app would require Google components to function.

Unless this dependency is removed or an alternative (Google-free) build is offered, users like me—who genuinely want to switch fully to Zoho for philosophical and practical reasons—will be unable to adopt Zoho Notebook, despite wanting to support the Zoho ecosystem.

I’m sharing this as constructive feedback and genuinely hope this is addressed in the future.

Thanks!