
The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition - pascal07
http://www.elezea.com/2012/07/sparrow-google-acquisition/
======
steve8918
Unfortunately, this is what you get when you pay $10 for an app.

There is a huge disparity when it comes to the cost of apps these days vs the
salaries required to sustain the engineers who make those apps. Even at
$10/pop, you need to sell a lot of apps just to sustain the salaries of very
good engineers, and THIS is what makes great products vulnerable to acqui-
hires.

The problem is that the $0.99 model of the App Store makes a $10 app look
ridiculously expensive, especially when there are free alternatives out there,
even though it's only 2 Starbucks coffees. And even though $10 is worth it.

It's the price of the apps that have drastically lowered the expectations of
what people need to pay for software, and this goes in direct conflict to the
rising costs of great engineers' salaries.

I'm not sure what the exact price point is, but my guess is that people need
to start getting used to the idea of spending $30-50 PER YEAR in a
subscription model for a great app in order to create enough monetary
incentive for the developers to keep their products alive. Otherwise Google
and Facebook will continue to drop the bills and pick off the best teams who
eventually get tired of the smaller comparative payoffs that these apps bring
in.

~~~
ben1040
This is spot on. Thanks to the App Store, the days of paying $30+ for boxed
software and paying again every year or so for version n+1 (assuming it comes
out at all) are pretty far back in the rear view mirror now.

I paid $10 for Sparrow and got far more than $10 in value from it. So while I
am disappointed that the best email app I have seen is EOL'd now I did get a
decent value and I can't complain a whole lot. I am no worse off than had I
bought a boxed copy of software with no promise for updates ever.

I would have paid $30 up front for Sparrow and purchased a large feature
release for that price later down the line. Happily. That is a price far more
in line with the value delivered.

How do we recalibrate people's expectations about the value of software back
to pre-2008 levels? Not everything can or should cost a buck.

~~~
kenjackson
"Not everything can or should cost a buck."

When I talk to many developers they tell me that everything should be free.

How do you recalibrate the consumer's perception of the value of software,
when so many developers don't value software either?

~~~
jiggy2011
I guess they are meaning "free as in freedom" which is something that comes up
time and time again thanks to the FSFs insistence on using poor wording.

I don't think that developers don't "value" software. It would be a push to
suggest that people who use Linux,Apache or Emacs don't see any "value" to
them.

I'm sure if they though about it they could probably assign a high dollar
amount that would reflect the utility they receive from these programs.

Personally I don't have a problem either paying for a commercial software or
using an open source alternative.

It's when an application is either free (as in $0 or outrageously cheap) and
closed source and I can't "get" the developer's business model that I would be
very hesitant to rely on it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> I guess they are meaning "free as in freedom"

Not necessarily. Most of the software developers use - from IDEs/editors,
through version control, synchronization, web stack, to server software and
even the basic but important tools like _ls_ or _grep_ \- is free. Free as in
"free beer". We are used to get tremendous value for free. We are used to give
away value for free. And I'm not surprised that many developers (myself
included) like this utopia, even if it is not currently sustainable.

~~~
jiggy2011
Open source is a sustainable way of making software a zero money cost though.
The contract is basically that they allow you to use the software on the basis
that you _might_ give some value back in the form of patches, bug reports or
even just asking intelligent questions on their forum or paying for commercial
support. Even if you don't they don't really lose anything.

A huge amount of OSS is fairly "developer facing" too, with possible
exceptions of stuff like firefox of VLC (few people would imagine paying for a
media player or browser today).

I agree though that bad FOSS evangelism may be partly to blame, if you tell
everyone to "use Linux because it is free, all software should be free!"
without explaining that price not the important part of the equation and you
are a software developer yourself then I guess you can't be too surprised if
people see that as endorsement to pirate Photoshop.

------
antr
In 1998 we wouldn't of complained - at least me.

It is 2012, and when I purchase software, I don't buy into the premise that
this software is going to be static for perpetuity, and this is because of the
fast-paced nature of OS, platform and web evolution.

I "marry" the software I love, and I am very happy to pay for upgrades. I
upgrade my Mac the day after a new OS X version is released, not only that,
but I use non-large company software every day for years: Panic, Bjango,
Made@Gloria, etc.

When I buy software, I don't only buy into the software I get, but I support
it because I think it has a bright and better future. If I knew the developer
was to stop development going forward, I would simply not support it.

Going forward, if I find that a small/medium developer has received capital
from an angel or VC, I am going to stay away from it (I already decided not to
use Foursquare, Path, Highlight, Kik and many other mobile apps for this
reason) - the investor will have the need to flip the company, whatever the
outcome for the software is.

~~~
jseliger
_I upgrade my Mac the day after a new OS X version is released_

I used to do that—until I realized that 10.7 (and now probably 10.8) don't
offer any substantial improvements to things I care about (as discussed here:
[https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/mac-os-10-7-is-
out...](https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/mac-os-10-7-is-out-today-
and-i-dont-care-because-in-the-beginning-was-the-command-line/)). In other
words, I've probably reached "peak operating system," in that marginal
improvements to OSes are really quite marginal. That's also true, at least for
me, of a program like Word. Have we _really_ seen substantial improvements
since, say, 2002? Maybe in stability, but not much else.

I'm not arguing that software itself isn't improving—a lot of software has a
huge amount of search space left. But some doesn't, and we get diminishing
marginal returns. Maybe I'll upgrade to 10.8 or its successor—Textmate 2.0 or
iMovie 12 could be the inciting factors—but there's a solid chance I won't.

~~~
jiggy2011
Problem is, what happens when they stop supporting the version that you are
using and happy with?

Would you feel confident going online with an OS that has known security
issues that will never be patched?

~~~
Nicole060
Using an outdated OS that is not supported anymore isn't good security, but in
theory there shouldn't be much danger as long as you follow some basic
restrictions :

1/ Put the computer behind a NAT router with no open ports/outside access 2/
Use a browser that hasn't dropped your platform (just because the OS isn't
supported anymore doesn't mean you can't find at least one browser that's up
to date with continuous security updates. There are still people porting
Firefox to PPC macs, an initiative called "TenFourFox". You can also try
Camino or iCab, two alternative browsers that have kept PPC compatibility) 3/
Don't open an email attachment unless it has been scanned through an antivirus

Point 1 and 3 are something I do even on a patched computer anyway. Your
desktop shouldn't be directly exposed to the internet.

I've never ran an outdated OS myself but I would feel confident in using one
as long as I respect those principles. The one thing I wouldn't be confident
in doing, though, would be running an outdated browser or an outdated mail
client. Security updates for anything that is in direct contact with the
internet is a top priority and using an abandoned mail client like sparrow
that doesn't _guarantee_ security updates is a terrible, terrible idea.

------
officemonkey
Also, frankly, I think people chose Sparrow because they weren't happy with
the big boy's applications (Apple's Mail.app on Mac OS X, Apple and Gmail's
apps on iOS).

It's a case of "We don't like Google or Apple's apps, so we're going to _pay
extra money_ to get something we like."

So when the Sparrow team gets picked up by Google _and_ we hear that
Sparrow.app is becoming abandonware, many people think "the bad guys win
again."

Of course, I hope the hue and cry about this will suggest to google that
Sparrow might be worth maintaining after all. A mail app that people like?
That can't possibly be a bad thing, can it?

~~~
keithpeter
"Of course, I hope the hue and cry about this will suggest to google that
Sparrow might be worth maintaining after all."

Or open source the app code? c.f Intellicad when Microsoft bought Visio

~~~
reddit_clone
Exactly what I thought. If they are interested only in the talent, why not
give the code to the community?

The publicity and goodwill alone should be worth it!

~~~
learc83
>If they are interested only in the talent, why not give the code to the
community?

Because they have a directly competing product. I'm sure that getting rid of a
competitor factored into the acquisition.

------
vog
This posting is very true, and this is exactly why I prefer Free Software when
it comes to sustainability.

Even if the developers' revenue plan (services, merchandising, whatever) turns
out to not be sustainable, at least the remaining software is free (in the
sense of freedom) such that others can fork it and can take care of it.

In that sense, Sparrow could have made a great move, since they don't plan to
make any more money with their product: publishing their latest code base
under GPL.

However, in that case Google might have hesitated to acquire them in the first
place. On the other hand, MySQL has been acquired by Oracle despite being Free
Software, and despite having existing forks such as MariaDB.

~~~
frontsideair
That's exactly what I had in my mind immediately after reading the article.
I'm no Mac user, but seeing loyal users let down, I just wish the app was free
software.

I don't think Google will release it as free software, but if they made it
open from the start, maintaining it would be a possibility.

------
netcan
Obviously, those arguments are somewhat metaphorical. Paying $2.99 (or even
$2,999) for software doesn't guarantee its sustainability. It doesn't move the
needle. It's more like voting where your individual vote doesn't count but you
still feel that its important to vote. Especially if you voice an opinion and
try to convince others (something that probably has more effect than voting).

I think we are talking about more abstract things. We want this software to
exist. We want these business models (small, profitable development companies)
to exist. It's not just "I want to use this software."

I think a reason for these kind of reactions to acquisitions is that we feel
or suspect that they are destroying rather than creating value. But, it's kind
of hard to tell so we don't usually make that claim. For small companies, we
know what they make and how many people use it so its easy to get a feel for
the value they create. When Google acquires a great team, its hard to know
what, if any value they create. Google obviously create enormous amounts of
value but its hard to tell what a new team ads or subtracts from that. Much
more nebulous are the effects that the existence of such acquisitions have on
founder and investor motivation to start and fund these companies in the first
place.

I think thats it at the core. A suspicion that such acquisitions are value
destroying activities resulting in less/worse software being available to the
world.

------
jiggy2011
I guess the problem with this is that in the days of app stores, internet
everywhere , automatic updates and 0 day vulnerabilities software suddenly
looks very fragile and susceptible to bit rot.

I remember in the late 90s there were still plenty of people around using Word
6.0 which was old at the time but still usable since MS allowed recent
versions of Word to create docs compatible with it.

Now, if your favourite app gets pulled from the store (that your device is
locked to), gets broken by an OS update or the developers simply release a non
reversible update that you don't like you're in trouble. Not to mention the
consequences of the vendor going bust or getting bought by a rival.

There seems to be a strong "C'mon just use an iPad and the cloud already!"
voice on HN, I guess I can understand why people are somewhat conservative
about it.

------
fpgeek
Yes, the Sparrow acquisition is a great illustration of how the whole "you're
the product" cult was broken from the start.

No matter how much you are (or aren't) paying you are always _both_ the
customer and the product. Even Apple, who gets plenty of money from their
customers directly, is willing to pimp out their customers as "400 million
active credit cards" in the right context. At the other extreme, Google
devotes an immense amount of effort to continuously improving search. They
know that they live and die based on how happy you are as a search customer,
even though they aren't paid even a nickel from searches directly.

I'll say it again: we're always both the customer and the product. There's no
escaping that. Our only option is to decide which vendors' tradeoffs we are
and aren't willing to live with. And black-and-white moralizing about whether
or not "you're the product" gets in the way of picking the shades of gray that
work for you.

------
antihero
Perhaps we should only pay for development of open-source software, so we
actually own what we're paying for.

~~~
technoslut
I don't believe that changes the situation at all.

An example of this is Quicksilver on the Mac. It's considered to be one of the
best Mac apps ever and the developer who made it, decided to open source it
after he decided to take a job at Google. Quicksilver development fell apart
afterwards.

My point is that people who used the app did so because of the talent of the
developer. A community can't always make up for that hole.

~~~
luriel
> An example of this is Quicksilver on the Mac. It's considered to be one of
> the best Mac apps ever and the developer who made it, decided to open source
> it after he decided to take a job at Google. Quicksilver development fell
> apart afterwards.

I don't use a Mac, and don't even know what Quicksilver was until I checked,
but this was posted 17 hours ago:

[http://blog.qsapp.com/post/27644282840/ss69-release-
quicksil...](http://blog.qsapp.com/post/27644282840/ss69-release-
quicksilver-1-0-draws-nearer)

Maybe development didn't follow at the same pace as before, but to say it
"fell apart" when they are very close to releasing 1.0 seems not very accurate
to this outside observer.

~~~
technoslut
Much of what is left of Quicksilver today is about fixing bugs and keeping it
on life support which is why I used the term "fell apart" instead of "dead".
This was an app that the developer stopped programming for in 2006 and the bug
fixing didn't really start until last year. Th plug-ins to other apps are part
of what made Quicksilver great and most still don't work and haven't been
updated since that time.

~~~
jiggy2011
Sounds like a great idea for a kickstarter.

I'd still take "basic bugfixing and maintenance" over "gone completely"
however.

I suppose in some sense it's a bit like owning a classic car, the warranty and
support from the manufacturer is long since gone but there exists a community
of owners and refurb businesses keeping it alive.

~~~
technoslut
The difference with your car analogy is that the car doesn't stop working
because other cars are adopting new technology or that the roads became worse.
Quicksilver broke once Leopard was released.

------
helipad
It's a fair point, but I'd suggest the main reason people get upset is it
feels like they've somehow wasted time getting attached to it.

People such as the OP get excited about having this pleasant thing in their
life and the implicit relationship in that as long as you buy it, it will
continue to improve.

For me it's the same reason early adopters back certain tech products, why
fans will follow film directors and why we sometimes get disappointed when
they don't follow the path we hope they would take.

------
jerf
This feels to me very much like the argument that "it's not worth voting
unless my vote is specifically the one that changes the outcome". You are but
one little person. You can do all the right things in the world and the
universe can still stomp on your face. The right things are not "the right
things" because they _guarantee_ success, but because they _maximize the odds_
of it. There are no actions that guarantee success.

This isn't a disproof of the "don't be a free user" philosophy; it's a
disproof of the idea that it's a guarantee of success, which it never was, and
never could be. The argument still holds.

~~~
gurkendoktor
> "it's not worth voting unless my vote is specifically the one that changes
> the outcome"

I think that's a bad comparison - it implies the outcome would have been
different if _everyone_ voted with their wallets. Yet a saturated market would
increase the odds of an acquihire.

~~~
chernevik
If _everyone_ had bought Sparrow, they would have had enormously larger
revenues. Almost as important, they would have had much greater certainty in
some portion of future revenues. That certainty is economically important, one
reason for taking a chunk of Google Cash is checking off the 'funded
retirement', 'funded kids college', 'bought house' items off the to-do list.

They also would have been more likely to attract investment for development
without a big partner.

They might still see reasons for joining Google, but financial security and
investment would have been less important.

------
LVB
_If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product
being sold._

I don't think it has 'failed', as the article states. Paying for the software
is necessary but no guarantee. If we slide back to everything being free,
things will be worse. But even if we do pay, we cannot forget one very
important thing: We are dealing with very small companies and all of the
volatility that comes with them. The situation is simply exacerbated when the
employees of that company are highly sought after.

It doesn't take Google to buy out a little company. They can just choose to
get other jobs or spend their time other ways, get bored with the product,
have a falling out, anything. Sparrow could have just as well said, "We're
stopping all development on the email client today. 100% of future effort will
be on games". And that's why boring enterprise software from MegaCorp still
generates huge revenue, because they can go tell a GE, Chase, Honda or
McDonalds something LittleCo can't. They can tell the customer that they can
expect a specific level of support and life from the product, and here's 20
years of history to prove it, and that they're signing on with a $5 billion
company that's not easily bought out. The cool stuff on the bleeding edge may
also be fleeting. Large companies want stability, and I guess people using
certain software do too.

Side-note: FOSS is a very different animal with interesting characteristics.

------
hobin
" _This_ is the core of the disappointment that many of us feel with the
Sparrow acquisition. It’s not about the $15 or less we spent on the apps. It’s
not about the team’s well-deserved payout. It’s about the loss of faith in a
philosophy that we thought was a sustainable way to ensure a healthy future
for independent software development, where most innovation happens."

I seriously laughed out loud.

Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily think his idea is silly, and I think
he may in fact have a point. However, let's not pretend all those people who
complained about the acquisition were doing this because they lost faith in
this philosophy. _That_ part is silly. Those people were just being slightly
dramatic because they liked a product and it would no longer get updated.

------
m0nastic
I think part of the problem in all the hubbub around the Sparrow acquisition
is the attempt to represent people's apprehension as a single entity. The
reality seems to be more complicated than that.

Some people are probably just upset because of an irrational sense of
entitlement ("I paid for X, and now I won't get free updates forever as the
product is being abandoned")

But there's lots of other reasons that people can be bothered by this.

I use the Mac version of Sparrow (without using Gmail), and the entirety of my
reaction when reading about the acquisition was "Oh well, I guess at some
point I'll have to find a new desktop email client. That sucks, I liked
Sparrow."

I do wonder what the community reaction would be if it was a different product
though.

If Sublime Text (which seems to be attracting a good following) announced
tomorrow that they were being acquired, and that the product was being
abandoned, would people complaining about it really be that surprising?

Even assume that they were also going to continue with maintenance on it, but
stop active development of new features. People would be upset. People on here
would say "You should never have assumed that Sublime was going to get new
features before buying it, if it didn't do what you wanted now, you shouldn't
have paid money for it" (I've found myself actually giving similar advice in
the past regarding buying smartphones).

People would write asshole-ish blog posts saying that those people were
whining.

I don't think this is actually an indictment on the "paid vs. ad supported"
dichotomy. Other people have rightfully pointed out that companies get
acquired like this all the time, regardless of whether their products are
free, cheap, or expensive.

------
aayush
The reactions across the board are quite disappointing, to be honest.

All you can do as a customer (or as anything, for that matter) is give up the
illusion of control.

This is the Sparrow story: A fantastic product was built, and exchanged for
money. The people behind the product were recognized, and were acquired for a
significant amount.

Everyone is a winner, and customers move on to the next thing.

What's more worrying is our reaction to an email client going under: it's
clearly a sign that we don't have enough well designed products for a system
that's been in mass use for more than a decade.

~~~
oellegaard
I completely agree with the fact that there are no well designed products for
email, now that Sparrow stopped developing new features - hopefully someone
gets a cool idea and puts it on the app store soonish.

------
bookwormAT
"If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product
being sold."

This statement is complete nonesense and I do not understand why it keeps
appearing everywhere.

You are almost always paying for apps and services, and you are never the
product being sold. Sometimes you pay with cash, sometimes you pay with ad
impressions. But you always pay and you are always the customer that needs to
be satisfied.

Facebook is not free. You pay for it with your willingness to have Facebook
show you ads. Ad impressions are as good as money for Google, because they can
exchange them for USD.

Google Search/Gmail/Maps are the products. And Google has to make them as good
as they can. Otherwise you, the customer, will stop paying for them.

~~~
notthemessiah
"If it's not being bought, it must mean that it is sold" is just bad logic,
plain and simple. It's just a nonsensical retort to an attempt to pigeonhole
technology facilitating transactions into stupid categories that were made for
a paradigm of classical economics, but still falls within the confines of the
paradigm.

------
zhoutong
It's all about value creation. Assuming every party here is rational: Google
decides to pay for the Sparrow team only because the potential value of these
developers is much higher than the price they pay. And Sparrow team accepted
the offer only because the big pay check exceeds the value all their own
customers combined.

If we hate this, we can either make such talent acquisitions less attractive,
or increase the value of software customers.

Talent acquisitions become less attractive when:

    
    
      - The number of talents available increases significantly
      - Economies of scale in software business is less substantial
      - There's ethical pressure from online communities
      - The act of "selling customers" (through data collection or ads) becomes less profitable or costs more (with things like DNT or ad blockers)
    

The value of customers increases when:

    
    
      - More people are willing to spend more money on independent software development
      - Access to software market is easier (with things like app stores)
      - More revenue streams with higher payouts (like high-quality ad networks such as Deck and Carbon)
      - Higher potential to get big (with VC money and building platforms/ecosystems)
    

The sad truth is, independent software developers tend to be less
entrepreneurial than startup founders (but I don't think the line can be drawn
clearly). They are only a little bit more entrepreneurial than consulting
developers (which are even more likely to be hired by big companies, but we
don't care much about them). Therefore they may not be willing to actively
improve their revenue by taking risks, and hence the acquisitions happen.

~~~
franzus
> independent software developers tend to be less entrepreneurial than startup
> founders

Why is that? Because they have a working monetization model when they launch?

~~~
jiggy2011
In some sense they are less "ambitious" I guess.

Risk/Reward scale:

Selling your labour -> Selling your skills -> Selling your product -> Selling
your vision

------
calciphus
The whole argument seems backwards to me. If your dream was that good software
could be supported by users alone (not ads or a giant corporate checkbook),
and by your own admission they were selling the software at a price-point
below the value you were getting from it ("I'd have given them more money if I
could")...

It sounds like you got exactly what you want. You got software that worked
great, that avoided the traps of "you're the product" and produced a positive
result for everyone. Then they got bought. But you know what? A thousand teams
of engineers are ready to take their place, since a big payout at the end
means there's considerable draw, and you really can sell an app at a bit above
costs, be comfortable, and that allure of a _maybe_ payout at the end is
enough to get over the hurdle of starting.

I guess it baffles the mind. It's like saying that big paychecks have ruined
sports, because strong athletes are only in it for the money. Perhaps they
are, but you get people who would otherwise do something else being willing to
give sports a try because that potential paycheck is enough of a draw.

------
BasDirks
After residing in unix-land for almost a year I decided to come back to Mac
OSX just 2 days ago, and after re-downloading my purchased apps, the
announcement by the Sparrow team was the second mail I picked up. Fuck.

Thinking back, in unix-land no such jokes were pulled. Something abandoned?
another trooper taking over. How the $#&% can you charge money for something
_non-open-source_ and then just leave it to rot?

I would pay a hundred bucks for a similar app (or a monthly fee) if I'd be
assured that the developers were dedicated to ME and THEIR PRODUCT.

Sparrow is above average. Congrats, I loved you for that. But you sinked your
goddamn ship before it got half way. I'm only this pissed off because it could
have been so much more. I will wait and see what glorious work you do for
Google. I (and all the people who paid you money) await your work with great
anticipation. Good luck.

~~~
Teckla
Just a few nitpicks:

"After residing in unix-land for almost a year I decided to come back to Mac
OSX..."

OS X _is_ a UNIX. A real, actual UNIX.

"...in unix-land no such jokes were pulled."

I am going to guess you were using Linux, which is not, in fact, a UNIX.

For what it's worth, I spent some time in Linux land. Over the course of a
year:

1\. One update left my system non-booting. After considerable research, I
think I discovered it was a grub/kernel incompatibility.

2\. An upgrade left my system non-booting. It was an Ubuntu upgrade from one
version to the next, which failed with a mysterious and non-helpful error.

3\. Another update caused my external monitor to no longer display the desktop
correctly. I was forced to use the 1024x600 display on my netbook instead.

I am now very skeptical of Linux (on the desktop) land. All these issues
resulted in a considerable time expense for me.

Now I'm thinking I'm happy to pay $x for operating systems like OS X or
Windows...

------
ori_b
Oddly enough, this is exactly what Stallman is on about. Without the source
code and the ability to upload that code on to your devices, your programs
longevity are subject to the whims of other people.

Even ignoring the whole "code wants to be free thing", the source is important
for the longevity of the code. If the software really mattered to you, you
would negociate a license that gave you source. Even if you weren't allowed to
resell or redistribute, having source that you could hire others to work on if
you needed it is important.

In fact, I'd love to see a shift to make proprietary software include the code
without license to redistribute the original code; Maybe just patches, maybe
nothing. But I'd love to be able to peek beneath the covers and learn, fix
things, and/or make sure it runs on new platforms.

~~~
fdr
That seems pointless, because then patches could not be distributed. Seldom
are patches economically viable for exactly one person to create, one at a
time, for themselves. That's the same burden of being a proprietary software
company without any potential upside.

Maybe for an organization, and in those cases a source-code escrow is not
unheard of. But really it's just a lifeboat so you can move on gracefully.

------
awicklander
I don't know why everyone keeps referring to sparrow as 'indie' developers.
They took funding. When you take funding you're no longer independent.

<http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/sparrow-mac-mail-app/>

------
carsongross
The reason sparrow had to sell is because they didn't have a recurring revenue
model. This is what limits all "pay once" desktop (and mobile) software:
either they have to charge prohibitively high amounts or they have to get you
to upgrade frequently. The former limits adoption and the latter is tricky and
encourages feature bloat.

I now want to pay for the desktop software I like as a subscription: it keeps
the developer fed and on call, and doesn't put undue pressure on them to add
features, while still keeping their revenue from me contingent on the
continued usefulness of their product.

~~~
rogerchucker
Nobody outside the developer community will ever pay for any software on a
recurring basis, especially if free alternatives are available.

~~~
gwillen
[http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/buying-guide-
subscri...](http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/buying-guide-
subscriptions.html)

------
jfager
For me it's as simple as knowing a product I like is not going to be developed
anymore, and having a complete lack of faith in Google to use them to turn out
anything near as good.

------
chernevik
If you build something of strategic value to a big player, they'll pay more
for it than the present value of its expected cash flows. They're expecting
improvements in cash flow in other, non-competing products, which they can
realize but which the original product will never see. Big players will
"overpay" for something of strategic importance.

So if the hope is that buying small products will free you from the big
players, yeah, that was always dubious, at least in the corners interesting to
those players.

On the other hand, Sparrow got built, didn't it? And whatever you liked about
it just got a big fat Market Stamp Of Approval. It wouldn't be surprising for
similar features to start appearing in other mail clients, some of them open
source. Maybe someone will build Sparrow The Sequel ("Google didn't get every
egg in the nest . . ."). VCs just got more interested in pitches for email
software.

How much this matters depend on what you want. If you want freedom from "you
are the product", the complaint makes more sense to me. But if what you want
is more innovation, well, Sparrow's DNA just demonstrated its ability to
generate returns. And returns on innovation more generally have been
validated. So it isn't clear to me that buying Sparrow "failed" to push
innovation forward.

------
idspispopd
Contrary to the tweets, I think it's perfectly fine to be upset about sparrow
no longer being developed.

The days of software being unchanging are gone, that's a pre-internet way of
thinking about computing, and it's perfectly fine to be upset that something
you rely upon is no longer supporting you into the future.

We live in an era where there is an expectation that our software titles will
keep pace with the rapidly changing nature of technology. The business model
of ios is simple, the vendor takes 30%, while the developer is free to lure
new customers with additional innovations/features without having to worry
about the expense of updating everyone who has purchased the title already.
It's the life blood of competition and a business model that many titles
adhere to.

So whether the developer is updating the code for new devices, adding software
features that are relevant to new emerging technologies or simply staying
relevant by supporting the latest standards. We treat software like a journey
and not a static point. Software titles compete by out innovating each other.
The moment this stops the software title is dead, it's competitors overtake it
quickly and rarely would any of us rely on a piece of software that is no
longer being developed.

------
JumpCrisscross
The solution to this is insisting on guaranteed support periods/contracts for
software you use - if this comes free, great! If you have to pay for it, so be
it.

Paying more for something just so you can nurse a philosophy you like is
textbook irrational. If you are paying more for something vague, pin down what
you want and pay for that precisely. Here we have a fear of software we love
disappearing - pay, explicitly, for it not to disappear.

------
mrschwabe
Thing is, Sparrow was relatively cheap. And as I understand, they had a team
of 5. So perhaps they were not as 'self-sustaining' as we assumed.

I guess the take-away is that, if you're going to remain independent - you had
best charge a premium. In fact, Sparrow already was a premium app - so it is
conceivable they could have doubled or tripled the price of their product with
minimal impact on the size of their customer base.

------
toddmorey
I'm not upset about the acquisition. I'd be happy if Google was acquiring them
to put extra muscle behind developing the app. But they are moving the
developers to other projects. That means a fast, native email client for Mac
isn't on Google's agenda. So I'm back to Mail.app or the browser. Gmail on
Chrome is good, but for me and a lot of other users of Sparrow, it's not a
replacement for the real thing.

------
meric
The philosophy is modelled incorrectly.

Rather than being paying customers of a software costing $15 and expect
support _forever_ , be a paying customer of software costing $5 a month and
expect support every month, while you're paying.

With regards to perpetuity software, the developer only has incentive to keep
on building the product whilst the market is relatively unsaturated. When the
entire market has purchased the product, the developer is no longer
incentivized to produce new features besides the ones he must build to fulfil
his contract (e.g. fixing bugs).

With a monthly subscription model, the developer must continue to improve the
product, lest his customers switch to alternatives.

------
everydaypanos
Shh.. Sparrow for Windows was just a few weeks away.
<http://tmblr.co/ZWzfbyPpHG3B> <http://t.co/OBeYi3Zp>

~~~
ceejayoz
Nope: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/21/3174803/sparrow-for-
window...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/21/3174803/sparrow-for-windows-
never-existed)

------
ozataman
This is not true for me. I'm happy for the Sparrow team, but I got upset
because I feel when I purchased their product, I got into an implicit,
unspoken contract with the developers that while the current version of the
product was good, there would be continued development and it would become
something wonderful next year, and even better the year after.

Now I'm just sad the product will rot over time.

I know the commercial model is broken for this, but I would have been willing
to pay more upfront and pay again for periodic major version bumps, assuming
pace of development continued.

------
dr_
I've downloaded Sparrow on my iPhone and used it for a bit but then later
switched back to the native email app, primarily because of the lack of push
notification at the time of its initial release. I wonder how much of this
sale has to do with the updates to email in ios6, such as the ability to
attach photos directly from the mail app. Can they differentiate enough to
continue to keep an active user base? if not its hard to beat a native app.

Can't comment on the Mac, haven't tried it.

------
ivanmilles
There's also the very basic disappointment that a piece of good software won't
grow to maturity. I finally found a mail client that restored my faith in SMTP
as a communications medium; a mail client that had me managing email
exclusively on my iPhone. A mail client that broke away from email as a
metaphor for paper envelopes with written messages on pulp.

I liked handling email in Sparrow. It felt modern, and now it won't get any
better.

------
azakai
> I paid full price for every version of the Sparrow app I could find. I told
> everyone who would listen to buy it. I couldn’t have given them more money
> even if I wanted to. So, as a customer, what more could I have done to keep
> them running independently?

This could have been avoided if their software were open source, or if they
committed to open sourcing it should they cease development on it.

~~~
d5tryr
How does switching to zero revenue possibly avoid the problem of developers
not getting paid enough?

~~~
azakai
While I agree that there is a problem of getting paid for writing open source
software, it is not quite that they all make zero revenue. There are several
possible revenue models for open source.

Also, there is the other option I mentioned, that they commit to open sourcing
it _if_ they cease development on it. That kind of commitment can make people
buying the software safe from having the product discontinued.

------
indubitably
It seems to me that the real story here is that software is starting to face
real and widespread commoditization on a deep scale.

Software has always been a very high-end, specialized line of work, and
qualified many developers still expect to make upwards of 80K a year (at
least).

Well, what happens when the software industry starts suffering from the same
crisis as the rest of the economy, in an irreversible way?

~~~
wiz21
I think there's software and software. Software for the masses, that adresses
the masses needs, well, hello commoditization. Now there's another job which
is to tell people with bucks how to make more bucks with computers. If they
have 10 bucks, well, your value will be in the range of 1-2 bucks. If they
have one billion, then you might help them a bit more and grab the money. The
only one who make money with the masses are Apple, Google and the like. Except
a few really complicated things like Amazon, PayPal or really "sweet spots"
like facebook, I'd think the probability to have a deal is super low. So
what's the solution ? Well I don't know. I guess we won't be able to advertise
things ad infinitum... So we'll be back to added value sooner or later.

------
Derbasti
Actually, I don't quite get why users are so upset about this. They said they
would keep releasing maintenance and security updates, so hopefully, I will be
able to keep using this app for quite a while.

Because the thing is, I think this app is quite wonderful the way it is right
now. I don't need any more features. As long as I can keep using it, I will
keep being happy with it.

------
MaysonL
The real problem is that most acqui-hire teams disappear into BigCo never to
be heard from again until they resign a few years later.

------
jonknee
Not that it would have prevented this, but the App stores really need to work
on an paid upgrade process. It's hard making $10 a head on software,
especially when that's all you're ever going to make. I can't believe paid
upgrades aren't a part of at least the Mac App store yet.

------
mmuro
What should have happened is to hand off development and/or ownership of the
app to another dev team. Sofa, the team that made Versions and Kaleidoscope,
did just that when they were acquired by Facebook. The apps still live on,
thanks to Black Pixel, and everyone is happy.

------
victorbstan
I think that's why you need to put your money into open source software, not
closed source software. Mozilla thunderbird could be the next Sparrow. If the
people with the vision and with the proper backing are willing to put the
effort into it.

------
cschwarm
According to Einstein, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.

A cooperation is not the natural "business" model for software. It's a club.
One won't get different results if one uses the same business model.

------
wang2bo2
Sparrow is never independent OK?

They depend on GMail.

They cannot even deliver push-notification for their iOS apps because they
don't want to save your credentials on their servers.

The argument around Instapaper still stands as long as it's an independent,
complete product.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Sparrow is never independent OK? They depend on GMail.

False. Sparrow works with any IMAP mail server.

------
juppipoppo
"We decided that we don’t want to be free users any more. " "The
philosophy..." "This is why I am a paid subscriber to services like..."

Sorry but you are an idiot if you really believed that.

------
pguertin
I never understood "If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer;
you’re the product being sold." It's clearly not true in the free software
world.

------
wiz21
Pfff... The market has just "adjusted" : the value of a mail client is close
to 0. That's what you pay almost zero for it; and that's why Googl payed
almost 0 for its developers as well. Selling a mail client in the 21st century
? Let me laugh... There's 0 added value in it. All you do is provide a
mrginally better experience and all the devs get is to solve the exponentially
harder support issues. Their business model was wrong. Because a business
model is not how to make money, it's how you are useful in the global scheme.
Sparrow was not that useful it seems...

------
TobbenTM
>If they don’t — well, at least they’ve eliminated a competitor, and they
still win.

Since when was Sparrow a competitor to Google?

~~~
dotmanish
Adverts-wise, anything that shows Google's content without making ad-revenue
for Google is a potential pie-eater they can eliminate.

~~~
furyofantares
Gmail supports POP3 and IMAP and they even mimic an exchange server, I think
it's clear they think it's in their own best interests to give people a lot of
options for accessing their email even if many of those options don't serve
ads. I don't believe I've ever seen an ad on any of gmail's own mobile
offerings, either.

------
evertonfuller
Am I the only one who didn't use it Gmail accounts?

~~~
m0nastic
No, I use the Mac version for my IMAP email account as well (I'm in the
minority of people who finds gmail to be awful).

I suspect we're a tiny tiny minority though. ;)

------
tlogan
Was Sparrow profitable?

~~~
Sachse
[http://www.businessinsider.com/dom-leca-interview-
sparrow-20...](http://www.businessinsider.com/dom-leca-interview-
sparrow-2011-8?op=1)

>In terms of numbers we've made more than half a million dollars in the past
six months since Sparrow was introduced in February.

That quote is from August last year.

------
nirvana
Could it simply be that Google is willing to so overpay for engineers that it
makes sense for Sparrow, which, in previous times would itself be a nice
successful small business (like eudora used to be, etc.)

Back in the day, Sparrow might have grown over 5-10 years to be a big company
to get swallowed up... but now, companies like google are so desperate for
talent that they cut them off too early by making absurd offers?

As much as I hate working for big companies (and refused googles constant,
persistent pursuit to go work for them) I'd be tempted by a $25M "Signing
bonus" (or whatever a Sparrow Founder's split of that is....)

~~~
facorreia
I think this is not about the engineers that built the company, but about the
VCs that funded it. Usually the contractual conditions put the VCs in control
of the situation so they can take an exit when it presents itself. Sometimes
the original owners get nothing out of these acquisitions.

Edit: clarification.

