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Sparrow acquired by Google

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Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#81

Post by mey »

rogerchucker wrote: post #55
rglover wrote: post #46

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 wh…

Clearly Sparrow was created for Gmail - so it's in Google's best interest to use those guts to enhance the Gmail app and dump the Sparrow app itself eventually. I thought that statement about not adding features is a clear indicator of that. I don't see why one would get frustrated with that or ... feel devastated about it.

Like when Microsoft bought Lookout?

edit: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/12/24.html

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#82

Post by thomasjoulin »

DouweM wrote: post #24
kyro wrote: post #17

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.

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.

So that was pull, not push. Push notifications was exactly the solution to the problem of apps constantly pulling in the background. Sparrow couldn't do push because they didn't want to have our emails on their server. Now that Google owns Sparrow, we can hope that they'll provide push. I wouldn't get my hopes up though :/

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#83

Post by rogerchucker »

justauser wrote: post #63
rogerchucker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Google was the best destination for Sparrow simply because sparrow was created for Gmail. If Apple acquired it then it's focus would be iCloud email which is garbage.

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.

I disagree with this romanticism that a company should always be built for sustainment. A small company has only two ways of being successful - either disrupt and be radically different or fill in a piece of the puzzle that a bigger company has not achieved. If you look at the nature of the product the Sparrow team developed - an iOS/Mac client - it wasn't radical. So being gobbled up by an appropriate bigger company is natural course for that startup.

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#84

Post by justauser »

atourgates wrote: post #67
kyleslattery wrote: post #35

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…

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 a…

Well said. We're seeing a lot of "ship and dump" from startups these days. I'm to the point now where I don't recommend a startup to friends and family or use for business purposes unless their product is self-hostable(and release of source code upon an acquisition or corporate dissolution) or open-source. As you can imagine, the number of products I recommend has dwindled to almost nothing since I've been burned so much myself.

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#89

Post by azza-bazoo »

BlackNapoleon wrote: post #48
azza-bazoo wrote: post #10

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.)

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.

> 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.

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#90

Post by sammcd »

ceejayoz wrote: post #72

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.

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