Sparrow acquired by Google

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.

If I read the grandparent correctly(and I do agree), the best destination is not Apple, Google or anyone for that matter but rather to stay in the game as an independent.

Where are the small companies that are building for sustainment? All of these product disappearances do have a long-term effect of causing users to hesitate before signing up to use your offering.

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.

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.

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.