311–320 of 393 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of their customers (myself included) invested No you didn't. You bought. There was no investment, you should not expect a 'return'.
If they changed their workflow to incorporate the product, they invested.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could check out http://www.postbox-inc.com/
Sadly it only work on OS X and Windows. Anyone knows a good email client for Gnome? Something that does only email.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who is arguing otherwise? We're not allowed to gripe without implying it was unfair? I think it sucks, and as a user that bought the app strictly to support future progress I feel abandoned. I don't really give a shit if I have a "say" or not in their decisions. I don't like how it went down. Assuming they leave Google and launch another startup (which we all know they will) I certainly won't be supporting them in th…
You think that another person should turn down (what was likely) enough money to support their families for the rest of their lives because you invested $10 in their email application? This is what you believe?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All these aquisitions are more insidious, they are being done by the big players to stifle diversity in the market and continue to solidify their leads on online services under the guise of talent acquisition to better their companies - rather its an effort to prevent that talent from building something that would be a detriment to their positions.
It baffles my mind, anyone would actually believe this. This whole, Google, is evil for hiring the authors of an app you like. Either they will put them to good use, or make less money.
This isn't as simple and one dimensional as calling a company "evil" - this is about the long term.
Startups in the valley are getting acquired earlier and earlier in their existence as google and Facebook and eventually overlap in their services and audience appeal.
The acquiring of the teams is defensive in that they take that team and their IP etc off the market from their competition. It is offensive in that it squashes any possibility that whatever service it was the startup had would compete for their similar service.
In cases like instagram, it was an obvious choice for Facebook as Facebook is the largest picture sharing service which also wraps all sorts of meta data around the users who are viewing those pics.
Thus, with instagrams reach it fractures attention from facebooks services/user. By acquiring them and ultimately layering the instagram features into facebooks pic offering the attention is not diverted from Facebook.
Attention is the resource that social services are harvesting from their users and monetizing.
If you're not looking at it from this perspective, then I don't believe your critically thinking about what it is that the Internet is, or how to build something that will last.
Companies that provide features, utility and services that keep the attention of users (especially when providing no physical product) are those that will have longevity.
So, capturing those that would build things that direct user attention away from your product is critical to these huge companies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
A good app has been EOL'd so the developer(s) can go work on a known crappy app. We've gone from "known good" to "hopefully this will work out and the gmail iOS app will be good"... how is that not frustrating if you're a fan of the iOS apps? As for the Sparrow desktop app, well, obviously Google isn't going to be developing a native desktop app for Gmail...
Why not? Why would they acqui-hire a team who have already built an amazing desktop mail app and not release one of their own? Is the idea that Google may simply rebrand Sparrow to "GMail Desktop" so completely out of the realm of possibility?
Sure, maybe they want the developers to work on other projects, but when their specialty is creating OS X desktop software (it's a lot different than webapp developement), it seems counterintuitive to completely nix this idea as feasible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A good app has been EOL'd so the developer(s) can go work on a known crappy app. We've gone from "known good" to "hopefully this will work out and the gmail iOS app will be good"... how is that not frustrating if you're a fan of the iOS apps? As for the Sparrow desktop app, well, obviously Google isn't going to be developing a native desktop app for Gmail...
> As for the Sparrow desktop app, well, obviously Google isn't going to be developing a native desktop app for Gmail... Why not? Why would they acqui-hire a team who have already built an amazing desktop mail app and not release one of their own? Is the idea that Google may simply rebrand Sparrow to "GMail Desktop" so completely out of the realm of possibility? Sure, maybe they want the developers to work on other pr…
I don't get why that's so insane to people either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah we got screwed. They just dropped the app. They are promising "big fixes" but that's about it. Lovely. This is the bad side of "trusting" startups and their apps. Pisses me off. I mean (to all you startup guys out there), if you have no intention of continuing your work, AT LEAST OPEN SOURCE THE CODE so some of us can jump in and maintain it!
> Yeah we got screwed. If the current version basically does the job that it's supposed to, then how did you get screwed? It's not like you spent hundreds of dollars on the app. The Mac version is only $10 for crying out loud.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's never a good idea to buy a software product (or hardware product) for what it's "going to be." You have to buy or not buy it based on what it is today, because they may or may not go down the path you expect in the future. What happened with Sparrow was unfortunate, but at the same time it was unlikely that an email client like this was ever going to turn into a great standalone business that would adequately co…