
Sparrow acquired by Google - scilro
http://sprw.me/
======
rglover
This is getting extremely frustrating. Sparrow is a fabulous email client both
for iOS and Mac. I love and use both daily and this is fairly devastating. I
was really looking forward to the products development, growth, and future
releases. To read this announcement and hear that they won't be working on
their apps but on _Google_ projects is sad.

To bigger companies: chill out with the "acquihires." If anything, do what
Facebook did with Instagram and keep them working on their product. It would
be awesome to see the guts of Sparrow used in a Google branded Gmail client or
similar (hopefully that happens, but I'm reluctant based on this statement).

~~~
w1ntermute
> This is getting extremely frustrating. Sparrow is a fabulous email client
> both for iOS and Mac. I love and use both daily and this is fairly
> devastating. I was really looking forward to the products development,
> growth, and future releases. To read this announcement and hear that they
> won't be working on their apps but on Google projects is sad.

I think it's a matter of perspective. As someone who doesn't use and has no
intention of ever using OS X or iOS, this is great news for me! I've been
hearing a lot about Sparrow's revolutionary UI, but haven't benefited at all
because they don't support Linux, Android, or Windows. Now, there's a very
good chance that some of Sparrow's UI features will be incorporated into the
Gmail web UI and into the Gmail apps for Android phones and tablets.

~~~
rglover
A great point. But still no excuse to have their existing customers left
behind. All of their customers (myself included) invested in the product
because it was good, because it worked extremely well, and because it solved
problems. I didn't invest in their work at Google. Where does that leave me?

The biggest concern I have with this is the same thing that happened to
Tweetie: the one company that should have scooped it up did and then
completely changed it into something that barely represented the existing app
(and more or less dropped an interest in the desktop client).

~~~
mindcrime
And now you've gotten lesson #1 on why F/OSS solutions have one huge advantage
over their proprietary counterparts: If the original developers of a F/OSS app
decide to drop it, you have choices. In the best case, another group of devs
may simply fork the project and keep it going, or you ('you' in the general
sense here) may choose to bring development in-house, or contract with a 3rd
party to maintain and upgrade the app.

Now you might argue that some of those choices aren't _that_ appealing, or
that it's not guaranteed that someone else will pick up the app and run with
it... but look at the scenarios with a closed-source, proprietary app: If the
devs drop it, you're f%!#d, end of story.

~~~
epo
Yet more wild-eyed, open source zealotry. No GUI-based F/OSS product has ever
achieved the level of polish and usability of things like Sparrow because the
people working on open source projects only want to do coding, they don't care
about design, bug detection, documentation or, God forbid, user interfaces. If
the developers of Sparrow had not been paid for their work, which they ensured
by keeping it under their control, it would likely not have happened at all.

~~~
mh-
I agree with your post so I want to add something which I think was your
intent:

* without a corporate "sponsor" entity behind it. (Chromium => Google, etc.)

------
ceejayoz
Sparrow had a $4.99 (half-off) sale last weekend
(<https://twitter.com/lifehacker/statuses/223750237490126849>). Borders on
fraud, if you ask me - scamming people into buying what they had to have known
by then they were planning on turning into abandonware a week later.

~~~
sammcd
Great software for half off doesn't seem like a scam to me. The app still
works.

~~~
ceejayoz
Timing a sale right before an announcement you're well aware will drop sales
numbers off a steep cliff looks pretty deceptive to me.

~~~
thematt
It's a standalone app, it's not going to stop functioning. $4.99 is a deal,
regardless of whether there would be future versions or not.

~~~
ceejayoz
> $4.99 is a deal, regardless of whether there would be future versions or
> not.

Then they should've put it on sale for $4.99 today, after the announcement,
with a note in the description that it will no longer receive new features.

If it's indeed a deal, surely all the people who bought last week would've
bought this week.

------
kyleslattery
The email Sparrow is sending out, looks like there won't be any future feature
additions:

    
    
      Hello,
    
      We're excited to let you know that Sparrow has been
      acquired by Google! You can view our public announcement
      here, but I wanted to reach out directly to make sure you
      were aware of the news.
    
      We will continue to make available our existing products,
      and we will provide support and critical updates to our
      users. However, as we’ll be busy with new projects at
      Google, we do not plan to release new features for the
      Sparrow apps.
    
      It’s been an honor and a pleasure to build products for all
      of our wonderful users who have supported us over the
      years. We can't thank you enough.
      We look forward to working on some new and exciting
      projects at Google!
    
      Dom Leca
      CEO
      Sparrow

~~~
atourgates
As someone who bought Sparrow on the day it was released - and is in love with
it - this feels like a big middle finger to the customers who have been
supporting them.

The core of my disappointment is the expectation of future development that
comes with buying into a relatively new piece of software. I didn't buy
Sparrow thinking I was paying for a piece of software that was feature-
complete. I bought Sparrow mail as a piece of innovative software along with
the promise of lots of great future updates to come.

Now, those future updates are done, because Google killed them by acquihiring
the Sparrow team.

It feels like more and more, when buying into a new exciting project, the risk
is less that the project will fail on its own, and more that it'll be
destroyed by an acquihire. Some day, I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a
barrier to startups acquiring dedicated new users.

~~~
ceejayoz
Now imagine if you'd bought it last weekend in their half-off sale.
<https://twitter.com/lifehacker/statuses/223750237490126849>

"Let's make as much money from our abandonware as possible before we have to
tell everyone it's abandonware."

~~~
uptown
That's when I finally bought-in. The thing has a critical bug with iOS6 ... no
clue if it'll ever get resolved.

~~~
yoda_sl
If you 'critical' bug is about the rendering of email on one column... looks
like latest beta 3 is solving that.

------
mmahemoff
Google recently acquired QuickOffice too. So now Google owns native clients
for GMail and Docs. In addition, they're continuing to build native apps for
GDrive, Google Plus, and probably others.

This is similar to GitHub and Twitter. Both grew out of the web, but have
increasingly acquired or built desktop clients, not to mention mobile ones.
And Facebook has made an about-turn on HTML5 everywhere and focusing heavily
on native mobile apps.

So I see a trend is that cloud-based services are realising they can't just
rely on a website. It would be great to see the web catch up, or even close
the gap, but right now, native is offering so much more capability, that both
web and native apps are necessary for prominent cloud services. That's good
for users, they get the best of both worlds, but also going to be a big
challenge for resource-limited startups.

~~~
notatoad
There's always the possibility that these app acquisitions are not to
strengthen gmail and docs, but to strengthen Android. Google has just bought
the maker of the best email client on iPhone, and announced that they're
stopping development of it. To me, that sounds more like a direct attack on
the iPhone than a vote of confidence for native apps.

~~~
mark_l_watson
That is what I thought also. That said, the GMail app on my Android phone is
already fairly nice.

------
jph
Great to see Google investing in email UX. Sparrow is awesome and bringing the
Sparrow UX ideals to Gmail will be a big boost forward.

The Sparrow co-founder and CEO Dom Leca discusses Gmail in some detail here...

Interviewer: Why can’t Google write a mail client for the iPhone that’s worth
a crap?

Sparrow CEO: Because they don’t really care about it. I mean, they’re not in
the native app business, and all that matters with them is to have an app that
is identified as the Gmail app on the iOS App Store for mainstream to use, I
think. I mean, they don’t believe at all in native things, which makes sense
in relation to the whole company.

Interviewer: Right. So they just, they don’t believe in the native thing, or,
they probably could deliver it, but they just don’t want to?

Sparrow CEO: Oh, yeah, of course. They could deliver something I think far
better than Sparrow or the application they released, but they’re just not
allocating any resources to this because they think it’s irrelevant.

Source: [http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/15/interview-dom-leca-
of-...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/15/interview-dom-leca-of-sparrow-
on-solving-the-iphone-mail-client-conundrum/)

~~~
juliano_q
I agree with him. You just have to use the Android Gmail app to notice that
Google can do an awesome native e-mail app if they want. The phone client is
so good that many times I prefer to use it than the web even when I am with my
notebook.

------
scottmagdalein
1) They sold because they were a funded company and funded companies have to
sell. That's how investors make money.
<http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/sparrow-mac-mail-app/>

2) I highly doubt Sparrow will work with upcoming iOS versions, which means
the people that bought it recently have been ripped off.

------
simonbarker87
Congratulations but...

Argh, I love Sparrow. Why couldn't you do the 37 Signals/Panic/Mail Chimp
thing and not sell and just be a nice profitable company that provides some
consistency - ohwell.

~~~
carsongross
They didn't have a recurring revenue model.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This.

Like everyone else I think the App Store lost a great app today. However, I
also couldn't figure out how Sparrow would be able to grow on $10 one time
purchases. Having been a big fan of Eudora back when it was sekrit hacker
group at Qualcomm (well not so sekrit but certainly not part of Qualcomm's
core business) I talked with their VP of product at some conference and he
basically lamented that once you sold it to someone you were done. They didn't
like selling bug fixes as 'upgrades' (that was just a paid support model) and
once you had a working client there wasn't much reason to upgrade. The 'free'
ad-supported version had a better revenue future than the purchased one.

By the same token these guys have to eat right? So its not like they can do
the open source route. They really need to be part of a bigger stable of
things in order to make it a business.

I did think it would be a good acquisition for Apple as the front end for
their gmail killer.

~~~
cpeterso
> I also couldn't figure out how Sparrow would be able to grow on $10 one time
> purchases.

Can a small company survive on one-time purchases of desktop applications? If
Sparrow charged $100, they might have more time to scale up their customers,
but they would have fewer customers.

Has Y Combinator invested in startups whose primary product was a desktop
application?

------
jcurbo
First Thunderbird then this, what's a native-email-app user to do?

I wonder what ever happened to that Letters email app for OS X that people
were wanting to build? There was a flurry of activity and complaints about
Mail.app and then nothing.

~~~
jhawk28
You could check out <http://www.postbox-inc.com/>

~~~
fceccon
Sadly it only work on OS X and Windows.

Anyone knows a good email client for Gnome? Something that does only email.

~~~
alexyoung
I've always liked this: <http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/>

------
BryanB55
Wow that sucks. What a classic example of an acquisition killing a great
product. I use Sparrow for mail on mac and iphone and like many other sparrow
users have mentioned, this really pissed me off.

What pissed me off even more was the way sparrow announced it like it was some
kind of great accomplishment, maybe for their own wallets but not at all for
users.

"Full speed ahead!" - What the hell does that mean? They just killed the
entire project. More like full speed to nowhere if you ask me.

~~~
ricardobeat
"Thanks to all who helped on our jorney" is a good one too.

------
mattvanhorn
I can't wait unti they bring all of Google's UI/UX power to Sparrow. I'm sick
of being able to get to my unread email so quickly.

------
scilro
Full text of the announcement:

    
    
        We're excited to announce that Sparrow has been acquired        
        by Google!
    
        We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did
        our best to provide you with the most intuitive and      
        pleasurable mailing experience.
    
        Now we're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger   
        vision — one that we think we can better achieve with
        Google.
    
        We’d like to extend a special thanks to all of our users
        who have supported us, advised us, given us priceless
        feedback and allowed us to build a better mail
        application. While we’ll be working on new things at 
        Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and
        provide support for our users.
    
        We had an amazing ride and can't thank you enough.
    
        Full speed ahead!
    
        Dom Leca
        CEO
        Sparrow

------
carsongross
Once again, kids: recurring revenue models. It appears to be the only way to
build sustainable, quality software these days.

I love, _love_ thick clients (even though I'm an ambivelent web guy) but every
time I see an app as a one-time $10 or even $99 shot, I think: how are they
gonna survive in the long run?

~~~
gurkendoktor
> how are they gonna survive in the long run?

In theory: By building the _next_ thick client app and pitching it to their
existing customer base. I loved OmniGraffle so OmniFocus was an obvious
choice, etc...

Apart from games, are there any examples of this business model left?

~~~
carsongross
Even games... the smart guys are building subscription models.

Right now mobile is going through the same discovery phase: a cool app comes
out, sells a bunch... then what?

------
kloncks
_While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make
Sparrow available and provide support for our users._

Here's hoping that that means my Sparrow app isn't going anywhere...

~~~
cjoh
It's name will just be changed to "Gmail" in the next release, I suspect.

~~~
dabeeeenster
And the cost will be $0?

~~~
masklinn
And it will stop being maintained

~~~
Kiro
Yeah, because Google has no interest in maintaining the official Gmail app...

~~~
pteromyscus
Google has abandoned tons of stuff and poorly maintains lots of others.

~~~
BlackNapoleon
Agreed.

I don't even see how anyone could debate this.

------
SeoxyS
Sparrow and Tweetie's acquisition are kind of a slap in the face of the
argument for making paid and self-sustaining products that don't rely on a
exit event to be in the black. Both were widely-successful paid products, and
yet they both managed to get acquired by a mega-company that manages to
destroy the product.

------
stevenleeg
Just sent the following e-mail to them:

I just recently purchased Sparrow for iPhone a few days ago, regardless of the
lack of push, since I knew I'd be supporting a small team with developing an
awesome app. I was particularly excited for the promise of push notifications
coming in the future (I was going to be more than happy to pay for a
subscription service). So now that this Google acquisition has occurred,
you've said that you are no longer going to be working on features for
Sparrow. Does this include previously promised features, such as push?

If so, it seems like you've slapped me in the face with a huge middle finger.
I paid for both of your applications in hopes of a future of growth for what
was already an awesome e-mail client, and now you're telling me that you're
killing development? That's a really shitty way to treat your customers if you
ask me.

~~~
orenmazor
I don't think Sparrow ever really promised push… <http://www.sprw.me/push.php>

~~~
stevenleeg
> You were more than 16 000 helping us on our Apple quest to get the VoIP
> privilege. We can’t thank you enough for your support. Unfortunately, Apple
> has confirmed that they are not willing to do any exception to the rule and
> that Sparrow will NOT be granted with the privilege. This means we’ll have
> to do Push on our side and that it will be integrated as a yearly
> subscription into Sparrow’s future update.

From their blog: <http://blog.sparrowmailapp.com/>

------
mattvanhorn
Ugh. Say hi to Aardvark (and Dodgeball, and Jaiku) for me.

------
cheap
Apple Mail sure did miss me. It's welcoming me back with 40% CPU usage.

------
kposehn
There are some companies that, when acquired in similar circumstances, you are
not sad to see subsumed into a larger entity. Either their product wasn't that
revolutionary, they didn't have a good strategy, whatever.

However, Sparrow does not fall into that category.

I think it is a massive mistake to sell like this. They clearly had the
product and following (IMHO) to become something massive. Selling early when
you are just getting started seems silly to me.

I'm sad that I won't have the continuing evolution of their fantastic product
to look forward to.

~~~
duaneb
> They clearly had the product and following (IMHO) to become something
> massive.

What exactly does 'massive' look like in this case? One-time payments don't
offer dependable growth.

------
zethraeus
Is it possible that with this and quickoffice that Google is actively trying
to degrade the iOS app market? It's one of the major hurdles that Android has
never really gotten over.

------
HaloZero
I would assume this means that Google is going to push even more focus on
native app development on the iOS and Mac Platforms. I imagine this was just a
talent acquisition.

~~~
cheap
Your assumptions are wrong but your imagination is accurate.

------
mmuro
Damn, it was nice knowing you Sparrow. I seriously hope they don't let
Google's UI/UX designers anywhere near Sparrow.

~~~
disbelief
Normally I would have agreed with you, but have you seen the latest Gmail
native client for Android? It is hands-down the best mobile mail client I've
ever used. Attractive and incredibly intuitive. Someone at Google has been
taking their UX vitamins.

------
pfortuny
Anyone here noticed the 'API vs "Platform"' issue again? Sparrow is
essentially for gmail which means it will become eternally linked to it. And
depending on the owner of gmail, either blow (like in PUFF) or become a part
of it (instagram is still alive because it has not been bought YET factually).

Looks like in this case Sparrow is going the way of the Dodo.

------
mtgx
I haven't used Sparrow, since I don't have an iOS device, but any particular
reason why Google thought they needed to buy it? What could Sparrow bring to
the Gmail mobile app that Google couldn't do themselves (or well enough)? Or
maybe they just wanted it so the competition doesn't get it first, just like
Facebook wanted Instagram?

~~~
netcan
Since it sounds like the service itself is being shut down its probably about
acquiring the team and (possibly) some bits and pieces of tech.

------
untog
This must have been Sparrow's game plan from day one, so kudos to them.
Hopefully it'll become the official Gmail app for iOS, get push support, and
we can all enjoy the benefits.

~~~
cheap
Steve Job's game plan was also to sellou.... oh wait, it wasn't.

------
jrnkntl
Happy for the Sparrow folks, not so happy for my fellow users and me. I am
using it since the beta and they kept promising from that version on that they
would add the one missing feature for me (and a dozen of other users): undo
support. I stopped using Sparrow for this only reason; then at 1.6 I started
using it again; just to see where it was at; lovely UI but one CPU hogging
little app. Sad to see these show-stoppers will now never be picked up in the
future Sparrow. Who will be the new kid on the block?

~~~
autodidakto
Here's my one missing feature they planned on but never adding: Increase the
(reading) font size. It's stuck at 12pt, which is too small for me. Usability
101, no?

------
BlackNapoleon
I wish Apple acquired them.

iOS Mail needs those gestures more than Google does.

------
atirip
My first reaction was - oh fuck. Am I alone.

~~~
simonbarker87
Mine was "Shit!" so no you're not alone. It was the same reaction I had to
Sofa (the guys behind Versions) selling to facebook

~~~
thisisblurry
Except Sofa sold/transferred both Versions and Kaleidoscope to Black Pixel to
continue to be maintained. I don't see that happening this time.

------
codex
It sounds like the Sparrow guys ran out of money and were bailed out by
Google. This is a sad outcome, but not unexpected: plenty of people make "good
enough" mail clients and give them away for free. Just because you want a
gold-plated email client doesn't mean many other people are willing to pay for
it, and monetizing an email client is very difficult without massive scale,
and advertising.

------
azza-bazoo
Wow. Hopefully this will give Gmail the kick in the pants it needs ... the
interface really hasn't changed that much since the early days.

(Well, of course it's been prettified a bit, but besides a few things like
Priority Inbox there have been scant few changes to the interaction. And I
always liked that using Sparrow _felt_ different to using the Gmail web
interface.)

~~~
BlackNapoleon
GMail has changed A LOT since its early days. What are you talking about?

Gmail is pretty much perfect and the Labs additions can basically give you a
"Sparrow-like" window and viewing pane already.

APPLE needs these improvements, not google.

~~~
azza-bazoo
> Gmail is pretty much perfect

There isn't _any_ room for improvement in Gmail? Really? It's still using the
same basic design of every email client since forever (labels/mailboxes at the
left, inbox shows a time-sorted list of messages, click through a message to
read).

Meanwhile Sparrow showed what was possible if you sit down and at least tried
to rethink the email interface -- with things like gestures, or by shifting
towards streams rather than lists.

~~~
BlackNapoleon
Google invented the entire notion of email streams. Did you forget that?

People weren't used to seeing emails that followed like IM conversations.

~~~
azza-bazoo
... which still doesn't excuse them not running with the idea and continuing
to improve. Sparrow did; maybe I should have said "shifting _further_ ".

(And yes, Gmail popularized conversation view, but it was talked about at IBM
Research and Microsoft Research years earlier. Of course, those guys are even
worse at delivering innovative interfaces.)

------
coryjacobsen
This is a huge accomplishment for the Sparrow team. Now lets hope Google
doesn't do what they do best and ruin this beautiful app.

~~~
lobster_johnson
They won't ruin it, because they have announced their intention to stop
development.

~~~
andyfleming
Where did they say that? It says in their announcement that they are going to
continue to support it. Do you just mean active development?

~~~
lobster_johnson
From the announcement: "... we do not plan to release new features for the
Sparrow apps."

Support is not "development" if you are just fixing outstanding issues, that's
"maintenance".

------
adambenayoun
I wonder what would have happened if the Sparrow team would come out and say
"guys we're going to close we don't have enough money". Would all the guys who
are yelling "I feel betrayed" support Sparrow with a $10/month recurring plan?

I doubt it.

I personally think that Sparrow had a chance to sell their business and
capitalize on all of the hard work they done so far, let's not forget that
this is their business and not a hobby. They need a end game.

I won't try to go into details as this is probably all speculation, but
monetizing a client in a saturated market with bigger competitors isn't easy.
I can understand that many of you 'invested' $5-$10 in sparrow and think
you're entitled to free support and lifetime slavery but let's chill a bit.

So you've lost $10, big deal. I'm sure you guys have invested more money into
more lousy software and haven't say a god damn thing.

Sparrow team, good luck, great work, happy to hear that another indie
developer made it. Hope to hear more success stories in the future.

------
hobin
Gee, people, let's chill out for a bit. There's so much anger here that I
think my eyebrows were scorched by all the comments. If the previous comments
are any indication, you might not want to read my comment if this email client
means the world to you. I'm afraid to say that I really don't see the big
deal.

Let me repeat that: it's an _email client_. People's days were ruined by this
news? Google is stupid and evil and-I-don't-know-what-else because they
acquired Sparrow? The developers of Sparrow are evil because they didn't do
what you unreasonably expected them to do? You people need a serious reality
check if these were your thoughts. Heck, the app _didn't even stop working_.

Now, with all that being said, I can understand a little frustration about
knowing for certain that your apparently-favorite app will not be updated
anymore. Fine. I get it. But can we cut out approximately 90% of the fury?

~~~
Destroyer661
_> But can we cut out approximately 90% of the fury?_

You have to realize this app existed in the apple-sphere. The user base is
part of a _very_ entitlement based generation for the most part. That's why
there's so much rage.

------
kyro
While I certainly understand the frustration being felt (I purchased the app
and was hoping for push notifications), I'm sure most people here would've
accepted the offer. With all that's been written on how little developers are
making on the App and Mac Stores, I highly doubt they were making enough to
sustain a team of 5. I'm assuming they're an ambitious group and selling an
email app would just have not provided them with the capital and resources to
achieve what they want. So they perfect their app and then what? You've pretty
much hit the end of that road.

Sparrow was up against the native OSX/iOS mail clients, the GMail native and
web apps, with the App/Mac Stores as their main distribution channels, which
make it nigh impossible to get your app any visibility save the smash hits.

All that considered, it makes perfect sense, to me, why they'd accept a Google
offer.

------
mavrc
And thus, my dream of finally getting a Sparrow native client for iPad is
crushed, like bug.

Who wants to build a really super good Gmail client for iPad? Both Google's
web-based version as well as their native app are pretty feature-light, and
slow, so it seems like there's definitely a market there.

------
SquareWheel
Ah, just bought Sparrow for iOS. Expecting it to go freeware shortly.

edit: Ah, and they're not going to be adding any new features.

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172222/google-buys-
sparro...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172222/google-buys-sparrow-mail)

~~~
robin_reala
Not everything that Google buys does. SketchUp was never free as far as I can
remember.

~~~
protomyth
SketchUp had free and paid versions

------
jblock
Conflicted. I'm happy for the guys who worked hard and clearly got what they
wanted out of this deal, but as a loyal Sparrow user, I feel some sense of
betrayal that they're simply going to abandon their products beyond security
updates.

------
chrisblackwell
I read the news in my Sparrow client, then immediately closed it, and
uninstalled it.

~~~
wusher
Why uninstall it? They already got your money.

~~~
chrisblackwell
No point investing any more time and familiarity with a product that will no
longer see updates or bug fixes.

------
trevorturk
I want a refund.

~~~
ceejayoz
I requested one from the App Store support site.

~~~
3am_hackernews
I did too and got one within 4 hours.

~~~
john2x
Care to share how you did it? Never tried asking for a refund on the App Store
before. I bought it last week during the sale and feel a bit cheated.

Thanks.

~~~
ceejayoz
<http://www.apple.com/support/mac/app-store/contact/>, submit a "Billing -
Other" issue, and you'll hear back quite quickly. I've always had good
experiences with them.

------
etfb
"Sparrow doesn’t owe you anything. You paid, you got software. They can sell
and/or kill it if they want. No right to complain. Sad, true."

The callousness of this argument annoys me. Hey there, smug twitterer! The
universe doesn't owe you anything! If your mother dies of a sudden brain
aneurysm tomorrow, you also have no right to complain! Would you welcome me
telling you so?

Yes dear, I know. Dead mothers sounds a lot like Godwinism. Whatever. The
point remains that the original comment lacks empathy, reason and relevance.
It's just a dick being a dick, dickishly.

------
hcarvalhoalves
This is acquisition is simple: if people stop using their web interface, they
don't make money on ads.

They will either drop the app, incorporate AdWords on it, or integrate with
Google Plus instead of Facebook.

------
tinomen
Congrats on building a fabulous software product then commercializing
(abandoning) it. I'm excited for my stale future ahead. I only hope the team
was well compensated in this acquisition.

\- selfish consumer

------
goronbjorn
This makes me sad as a user, but it seems to be the trend that smaller
companies that make great products get acquired by big companies for talent,
and those great products disappear.

------
esutton
What makes this worse is they've been offering a discounted price this past
week for their apps. Seems wrong to take money from new users days before your
about to stop development.

------
archildress
Lot of talk here about their lack of recurring revenue models; the interesting
thing I think is that they were developing a recurring revenue facet.

If you missed it, the problem on iOS is that they couldn't get push email
support working (they tried to use the VOIP exception but Apple caught it
while review), so the talk was that they would offer a yearly subscription
type thing that would somehow enable push email.

I'm not sure how much that would have been, but I would have almost certainly
subscribed.

------
ndrake
[http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/how-to-prepare-for-
googles-...](http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/how-to-prepare-for-
googles-a.html)

------
Aykroyd
From their message "We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our
best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing
experience. Now we're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision —
one that we think we can better achieve with Google."

I wonder if that means that they're going to work on plus. What else would
Google think of as a bigger vision for how people communicate?

------
stock_toaster
Ok, now that sparrow is dead....any good alternatives?

------
RexRollman
This reminds me of Yahoo's purchase of Konfabulator.

------
msie
How lucrative is the email client market? Could the makers of Sparrow have
survived for a while? I would think that a lot of people are already satisfied
with Mail or a web client, and if someone bought a copy of Sparrow they
wouldn't be buying another copy for a while. I'm surprised that there are
multiple companies out there selling Mac email clients.

------
timw6n
A shame. Sparrow was one of the few players still innovating in desktop email
clients, especially now that Thunderbird has been similarly abandoned. They
had already brought us custom smtp aliases, which I really came to rely on,
and cloud app attachments. Who knows how far the boundaries could've been
pushed with another year of independent operation.

------
mikerice
I love how everyone here is complaining but if 90% of you were in that
position you probably would have taken the offer.

~~~
ceejayoz
I'd quite possibly have taken the offer, but I like to think I wouldn't have
tried to gobble up as much final revenue as possible by offering it for half-
off while I negotiated to turn it into abandonware.

------
johnchristopher
Maybe there is a small chance a window client might shows up in the pipeline
:)

Anyway, there is a mail client (that began as a project of midori's author)
that looks a little bit like sparrow:
<http://redmine.yorba.org/projects/geary/wiki>

It's very early in its dev. stage though.

------
marquis
For those looking for a replacement: <http://postbox-inc>. I actually just
switched a week ago from Sparrow because I wasn't happy with the way it makes
unread mail disappear all the time. I'm growing to love PostBox, and the
experience is not hugely different.

------
yhuhytvh
Anyone interested in building a new simple and beautiful iOS email product? I
think the market's just opened up.

~~~
mronge
Check out my iOS/Mac library for a head start: <http://www.libmailcore.com> It
uses the same C library that powers Sparrow

------
glennos
Congratulations to the team, but as a user this is extremely disappointing.
Sparrow is the only desktop client I considered good enough to use since
Calypso back in the late-90s/early-2000s.

Google, please do right by your users and put these guys on projects that will
deliver as much user value as that of Sparrow.

------
andyobryan
In regards to the Sparrow going on sale before being sold:

Maybe with every app ever bought there is a risk that the company goes under,
therefore no more updates, and you've lost your money... but in this case,
it's simply leaving a sour taste for a lot of people. Add me to this list.

------
bradgessler
Honestly, I feel like I got burnt for paying for Sparrow. I finally bought the
desktop and iPhone app in an effort to fund a great product, but then Google
swoops in and essentially killed it.

Its really ashamed to see such a promising product get sucked inside the
bowels of Google.

------
codyjames
When I pay premium prices for apps it is under the assumption that I am
helping the developers maintain and improve the application.

If you are hoping to sell, you should price your app at $.99 and hope to get
as many users as possible. That also helps me know what your plan is.

~~~
da_n
While it is a shame to the app effectively killed, calling it premium priced
is just a reflection of how the app store has forced developers to push prices
to the absolute bottom. Ad-in the fact that they had no recurring revenue
model, getting a ton of new users could actually have been a false economy for
them. They did not owe users an explanation of their future business plans,
that's not how it works.

~~~
ceejayoz
> While it is a shame to the app effectively killed, calling it premium priced
> is just a reflection of how the app store has forced developers to push
> prices to the absolute bottom.

It's an e-mail client. The major competitors are pretty much webmail (free),
Outlook Express (free), Outlook (which you'd only use if you already paid for
it as part of Office), Thunderbird (free), and Apple Mail (free). So, yes,
it's a premium price for an e-mail client.

------
tomflack
One thing I loved about sparrow is they charged for their product. I thought
that by paying money I was supporting a business. There are loads of similar
calibre apps out there they could have tackled with the same gusto they
approached email.

So, what are the alternatives?

------
kyro
Very well designed app, so congrats to them. My only gripe and what's
prevented me from using it as my main email app on my phone has been the lack
of push notifications. I'm really, really hoping they implement that in an
upcoming release.

~~~
DouweM
They had already implemented it, but were using a way of keeping the app
running in the background that's reserved for apps that play music or track
your GPS location. Apple rejected the app because Sparrow was neither.

~~~
clarky07
There is another way, but you can't keep it open forever. Any app can request
to stay open for a short time to do anything it wants after close. I use this
for an app that saves data to the cloud. No reason to make the user wait
around for the save. You can't stay open forever though which I suspect is
what they were doing.

Just wanting to point out there is a third option, though not indefinitely.

------
mortenjorck
What I want to know is what's happening to LibEtPan, the open-source IMAP
library that powers Sparrow. Dinh Viêt Hoà, the other Sparrow co-founder,
maintains it, and I wonder if Google will continue to support development of
it.

------
myoffe
I'm also sad that Sparrow won't be developed any more (I use both Mac and
iPhone apps).

But if the Sparrow team will have a chance to improve Gmail, then we will all
benefit from it. Hopefully, this is the case. Otherwise, it's just annoying.

------
imjoel
We can say "Bon voyage" to ever seeing a Sparrow iPad app. _shakes fist_

------
cheap
IS NOTHING SACRED ANYMORE???

~~~
cheap
Sorry for the caps, it was my initial reaction.

------
bsg75
Oddly the app was on sale a week ago:
<http://blog.sparrowmailapp.com/post/27116220357/499sparrow>

------
FuzzyDunlop
This is good news for Sparrow, but for the users it is anything but.

I would hope at least that they don't eventually pull the app. Some of us
actually prefer the native experience to the webapp one.

------
quarterto
I bloody well hope they continue development, and it becomes the official
desktop/iPhone client. I love Sparrow, and would hate to see it vanish into
the "acquired company" ether.

~~~
3am_hackernews
I was hoping for the same. But I think they are not going to do any more
development on their Sparrow client according to the latest email they sent to
the users. Sucks for the current paid users, but hey who cares once they get a
million more users and many more $$, right?

------
AmericanOP
There's a new native email client coming.. email me for more info.

------
kposehn
I was talking with a friend and I realized what bugged me so much, and how to
sum it up:

It feels like the Sparrow team stopped on first base, when the ball is sailing
out of the park.

------
lyime
Congrats to the team! Well deserved. It's one of the better apps I use daily,
both on desktop and mobile. Hope they make it better and don't kill it.

------
marban
The only question that's left is how we can make the Archive button in
mail.app to work like it should with gmail. I'd hate going back to mailplane.

------
ozataman
Google, please realize Sparrow has a set of unique values the web app can't
and likely won't ever provide, and continue its development.

------
jpxxx
Hooray! Now can they also buy BusyCal so that there's at least one non-
braindamaged method of talking to Google CalDAV servers on a Mac?

------
varunsaini
Great acquisition by Google. Will help Google in stream lining it's iPhone and
iPad app offering.

I believe now, Sparrow will be a free product :)

~~~
jamie-chung
First thing that came to my mind too. Would be interesting if they still
upheld the same pricing model as before.

------
dopp
If there was a new sparrow-esque app in the market that was drastically better
than stock ios mail app, would people buy it?

------
scotu
don't be absolutist <http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/>
(the general point "do-have-a-business-model-please" is still true, but when I
read it I felt something like "you can always trust your friendly for pay
app")

------
Yaggo
Wow, the arrow hitted the heart.

------
antidaily
I hope the Google+ team doesn't get ahold of them before they can fix Gmail
and apps.

------
obilgic
Any idea how much google paid?

------
jaxn
FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK! This is horrible news.

This comment will likely get down voted, but this is my authentic comment on
the story. I am having a very negative emotional reaction to the news.
Especially the part about not further developing new features (like the iPad
app I have been anxiously awaiting).

------
weslly
This is sad and frustrating, guess I'm going back to Mail.app.

------
twodayslate
That means they will be getting push notifications now? :P

------
gaving
How incredibly awful.

------
ericraio
Anyone see a price of how much Google paid Sparrow?

~~~
metafour
Under $25 million.

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172365/sources-google-
spa...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172365/sources-google-
sparrow-25-million-gmail-client)

------
ricardobeat
How long until they buy Collections or RocketDocs?

------
evanm
Great acquisition. Best email client out there.

------
squarecat
Where's Atreyu when you need him?! #TheGnothing

------
mwww
How many users/downloads did Sparrow have?

------
Tawheed
Email is Dead. Long Live Email.

------
swaraj
Sparrow is the shit

------
thlt
Congrat a Viet :)

------
Spittie
Would be nice to see a port to ChromeOS or as a webapp.

~~~
brajkovic
I think you grossly missed the point of Sparrow—as a webapp, it's 100%
useless, because the current Gmail interface exists.

At best, they can take some UI/UX elements from Sparrow and incorporate them
into Gmail as is, but porting it as a webapp or porting it to ChromeOS are
both defeating the point of the app and platform, respectively.

