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The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

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Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#111

Post by 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.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#112

Post by stevenwei »

phil wrote: post #104
webwright wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very very true. Their overall top grossing US rank (on iPhone) was stabilizing in the 500-700 range (after generally declining for months[1]), which equates to tens of thousands of dollars per month from my understanding. I'm sure they made some from their Mac app as well. This is GOOD MONEY, don't get me wrong. But you'd have to really love self-employment to take this over a $2M payout and a $200k comp pack…

Mac app had a run rate of over $1m its first six months, per this interview: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-08-26/tech/30036420... Who knows what was happening internally, but on the surface: strong team of 5, $1-1.5m revenue their first year, tremendous reputation and another product in the pipeline. What more could you ask for to make a long term go of it?

The article says they made "more than half a million" in the first six months on the Mac App Store, not $1M. Since then, they've consistently been in the Top 50 on the Mac App Store, so the numbers have likely sustained over time.

$1-1.5m per year is a realistic estimate, IMO. Of course, if Google was offering the rumored $25M, taking a 25x payday is pretty hard to resist.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#114

Post by d5tryr »

azakai wrote: post #110

> 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.

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

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#115

Post by jseliger »

antr wrote: post #14

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…

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...). 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.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#116

Post by furyofantares »

dotmanish wrote: post #6
TobbenTM wrote: post #5

>If they don’t — well, at least they’ve eliminated a competitor, and they still win. Since when was Sparrow a competitor to Google?

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

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.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#117

Post by eropple »

jseliger wrote: post #115
antr wrote: post #14

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…

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... ). In other words, I've probably reached "peak operating system," in that marginal improvements to OSes are really quite marginal. That's als…

YMMV, but I find Mission Control to be absolutely invaluable in Lion (and I was a huge Spaces fan - removing it for Mission Control was one of my biggest apprehensions). It was worth $30 (amortized across all my Macs) to me, easily. I don't buy that we've reached "peak operating system", though I would say that in the Microsoft ecosystem they may have reached "peak Windows" with Windows 7.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#118

Post by chernevik »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #69
jerf wrote: post #67

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 succ…

> "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.

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.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#119

Post by Zirro »

ben1040 wrote: post #70
steve8918 wrote: post #60

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…

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 a…

"How do we recalibrate people's expectations about the value of software back to pre-2008 levels?"

As someone who wasn't quite old enough to be interested in following this when it happened, I feel the need to ask:

Why did the App Store affect pre-2008 price-levels as much as it did?

Were most apps this cheap at the launch of the App Store, or did it lower over the year(s)?

Did Apple set any guidelines for the price-levels of apps, thus creating the levels we're seeing today, or was it entirely up to the developers?

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#120

Post by jiggy2011 »

jseliger wrote: post #115
antr wrote: post #14

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…

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... ). In other words, I've probably reached "peak operating system," in that marginal improvements to OSes are really quite marginal. That's als…

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?

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