20 ms·

Sparrow acquired by Google

502 points by scilro 14y ago

codyjames 14y ago
When I pay premium prices for apps it is under the assumption that I am helping the developers maintain and improve the application. If you are hoping to sell, you should price your app at $.99 and hope to get as many users as possible. That also helps me know what your plan is.
- da_n 14y ago
  While it is a shame to the app effectively killed, calling it premium priced is just a reflection of how the app store has forced developers to push prices to the absolute bottom. Ad-in the fact that they had no recurring revenue model, getting a ton of new users could actually have been a false economy for them. They did not owe users an explanation of their future business plans, that's not how it works.
  - ceejayoz 14y ago
    > While it is a shame to the app effectively killed, calling it premium priced is just a reflection of how the app store has forced developers to push prices to the absolute bottom. It's an e-mail client. The major competitors are pretty much webmail (free), Outlook Express (free), Outlook (which you'd only use if you already paid for it as part of Office), Thunderbird (free), and Apple Mail (free). So, yes, it's a premium price for an e-mail client.
- franzus 14y ago
  Premium prices? $9.99? Are you kidding?
scilro 14y ago
Full text of the announcement: We're excited to announce that Sparrow has been acquired by Google! We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience. Now we're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google. We’d like to extend a special thanks to all of our users who have supported us, advised us, given us priceless feedback and allowed us to build a better mail application. While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users. We had an amazing ride and can't thank you enough. Full speed ahead! Dom Leca CEO Sparrow
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
kloncks 14y ago
While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users. Here's hoping that that means my Sparrow app isn't going anywhere...
- cjoh 14y ago
  It's name will just be changed to "Gmail" in the next release, I suspect.
  - dabeeeenster 14y ago
    And the cost will be $0?
    - masklinn 14y ago
      And it will stop being maintained
      - Kiro 14y ago
        Yeah, because Google has no interest in maintaining the official Gmail app...
        pteromyscus 14y ago
        Google has abandoned tons of stuff and poorly maintains lots of others.
        BlackNapoleon 14y ago
        Agreed. I don't even see how anyone could debate this.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
SquareWheel 14y ago
Ah, just bought Sparrow for iOS. Expecting it to go freeware shortly. edit: Ah, and they're not going to be adding any new features. http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172222/google-buys-sparrow-mail http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172222/google-buys-sparro...
- robin_reala 14y ago
  Not everything that Google buys does. SketchUp was never free as far as I can remember.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    SketchUp had free and paid versions
HaloZero 14y ago
I would assume this means that Google is going to push even more focus on native app development on the iOS and Mac Platforms. I imagine this was just a talent acquisition.
- cheap 14y ago
  Your assumptions are wrong but your imagination is accurate.
quarterto 14y ago
I bloody well hope they continue development, and it becomes the official desktop/iPhone client. I love Sparrow, and would hate to see it vanish into the "acquired company" ether.
- 3am_hackernews 14y ago
  I was hoping for the same. But I think they are not going to do any more development on their Sparrow client according to the latest email they sent to the users. Sucks for the current paid users, but hey who cares once they get a million more users and many more $$, right?
lyime 14y ago
Congrats to the team! Well deserved. It's one of the better apps I use daily, both on desktop and mobile. Hope they make it better and don't kill it.
obilgic 14y ago
Any idea how much google paid?
azza-bazoo 14y ago
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.)
- radarsat1 14y ago
  > the interface really hasn't changed that much since the early days. And why should it? I haven't used Sparrow, but I have no problems with gmail. How is it different / better?
- BlackNapoleon 14y ago
  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.
  - azza-bazoo 14y ago
    > 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.
    - BlackNapoleon 14y ago
      Google invented the entire notion of email streams. Did you forget that? People weren't used to seeing emails that followed like IM conversations.
      - azza-bazoo 14y ago
jph 14y ago
Great to see Google investing in email UX. Sparrow is awesome and bringing the Sparrow UX ideals to Gmail will be a big boost forward. The Sparrow co-founder and CEO Dom Leca discusses Gmail in some detail here... Interviewer: Why can’t Google write a mail client for the iPhone that’s worth a crap? Sparrow CEO: Because they don’t really care about it. I mean, they’re not in the native app business, and all that matters with them is to have an app that is identified as the Gmail app on the iOS App Store for mainstream to use, I think. I mean, they don’t believe at all in native things, which makes sense in relation to the whole company. Interviewer: Right. So they just, they don’t believe in the native thing, or, they probably could deliver it, but they just don’t want to? Sparrow CEO: Oh, yeah, of course. They could deliver something I think far better than Sparrow or the application they released, but they’re just not allocating any resources to this because they think it’s irrelevant. Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/15/interview-dom-leca-of-sparrow-on-solving-the-iphone-mail-client-conundrum/ http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/15/interview-dom-leca-of-...
- Aykroyd 14y ago
  I hope that this means that they're investing in email UX. That's my optimistic take on the acquisition. My pessimistic take on it is that they're just getting talented developers and product folks and they're going to have them working on something completely different.
- juliano_q 14y ago
  I agree with him. You just have to use the Android Gmail app to notice that Google can do an awesome native e-mail app if they want. The phone client is so good that many times I prefer to use it than the web even when I am with my notebook.
mattvanhorn 14y ago
Ugh. Say hi to Aardvark (and Dodgeball, and Jaiku) for me.
varunsaini 14y ago
Great acquisition by Google. Will help Google in stream lining it's iPhone and iPad app offering. I believe now, Sparrow will be a free product :)
- jamie-chung 14y ago
  First thing that came to my mind too. Would be interesting if they still upheld the same pricing model as before.
kyro 14y ago
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.
- DouweM 14y ago
  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.
  - clarky07 14y ago
    There is another way, but you can't keep it open forever. Any app can request to stay open for a short time to do anything it wants after close. I use this for an app that saves data to the cloud. No reason to make the user wait around for the save. You can't stay open forever though which I suspect is what they were doing. Just wanting to point out there is a third option, though not indefinitely.
  - thomasjoulin 14y ago
    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 :/
atirip 14y ago
My first reaction was - oh fuck. Am I alone.
- simonbarker87 14y ago
  Mine was "Shit!" so no you're not alone. It was the same reaction I had to Sofa (the guys behind Versions) selling to facebook
  - thisisblurry 14y ago
    Except Sofa sold/transferred both Versions and Kaleidoscope to Black Pixel to continue to be maintained. I don't see that happening this time.
- jonkratz 14y ago
  Yeah, I feel the same. Obviously, they had an offer they couldn't refuse, I'm sure, and I don't blame them for taking it. But that said, I love Sparrow and am saddened that it could end that fast.
- untog 14y ago
  Why? If you use Sparrow, you use Gmail. So it's an odd place for a Google-hater to be.
  - biafra 14y ago
    I don't. I use my own IMAP4 server with Sparrow.
- carlsednaoui 14y ago
  Same here. Im always afraid that an acquisition will turn a service I love into some long-forgotten lines of codes as the team works on new projects.
- shadesandcolour 14y ago
  Right there with you. Sparrow is effectively done now. Gmail itself doesn't need the improvements, the clients need to improve, which won't happen if they join the gmail team.
mattvanhorn 14y ago
I can't wait unti they bring all of Google's UI/UX power to Sparrow. I'm sick of being able to get to my unread email so quickly.
Spittie 14y ago
Would be nice to see a port to ChromeOS or as a webapp.
- brajkovic 14y ago
  I think you grossly missed the point of Sparrow—as a webapp, it's 100% useless, because the current Gmail interface exists. At best, they can take some UI/UX elements from Sparrow and incorporate them into Gmail as is, but porting it as a webapp or porting it to ChromeOS are both defeating the point of the app and platform, respectively.
imjoel 14y ago
We can say "Bon voyage" to ever seeing a Sparrow iPad app. shakes fist
mmuro 14y ago
Damn, it was nice knowing you Sparrow. I seriously hope they don't let Google's UI/UX designers anywhere near Sparrow.
- disbelief 14y ago
  Normally I would have agreed with you, but have you seen the latest Gmail native client for Android? It is hands-down the best mobile mail client I've ever used. Attractive and incredibly intuitive. Someone at Google has been taking their UX vitamins.
- myko 14y ago
  This is some pretty anti-Google flame baiting. What kind of design qualifications do you have? Have you even seen the Gmail app on Android? Gmail is also one of the easiest to use, nicest web apps ever created.
gaving 14y ago
How incredibly awful.
untog 14y ago
This must have been Sparrow's game plan from day one, so kudos to them. Hopefully it'll become the official Gmail app for iOS, get push support, and we can all enjoy the benefits.
- cheap 14y ago
  Steve Job's game plan was also to sellou.... oh wait, it wasn't.
trevorturk 14y ago
I want a refund.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  I requested one from the App Store support site.
  - 3am_hackernews 14y ago
    I did too and got one within 4 hours.
    - john2x 14y ago
      Care to share how you did it? Never tried asking for a refund on the App Store before. I bought it last week during the sale and feel a bit cheated. Thanks.
      - ceejayoz 14y ago
        http://www.apple.com/support/mac/app-store/contact/ http://www.apple.com/support/mac/app-store/contact/, submit a "Billing - Other" issue, and you'll hear back quite quickly. I've always had good experiences with them.
kyleslattery 14y ago
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 we’ll be busy with new projects at Google, we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to build products for all of our wonderful users who have supported us over the years. We can't thank you enough. We look forward to working on some new and exciting projects at Google! Dom Leca CEO Sparrow
- pwenzel 14y ago
  This is extremely sad. I use Sparrow all day, every single day.
  - imd23 14y ago
    Same here. I use it even for chat! It's an awesome app, so well designed and programmed. Makes me sad.
- cheap 14y ago
  Key point, "we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps".
- markgx 14y ago
  Looks like we can kiss getting push notifications on iPhone and the teased iPad version goodbye.
  - RKearney 14y ago
    And I just purchased that app yesterday. I'll try and pursue getting a refund from Apple, although I'm not sure how successful I will be in the process. It's aggravating seeing potentially amazing start-up companies get purchased by a large company and then everything they've done seemingly ceases to exist. Also, how many companies that Google acquires eventually just die off?
simonbarker87 14y ago
Congratulations but... Argh, I love Sparrow. Why couldn't you do the 37 Signals/Panic/Mail Chimp thing and not sell and just be a nice profitable company that provides some consistency - ohwell.
- carsongross 14y ago
  They didn't have a recurring revenue model.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    This. Like everyone else I think the App Store lost a great app today. However, I also couldn't figure out how Sparrow would be able to grow on $10 one time purchases. Having been a big fan of Eudora back when it was sekrit hacker group at Qualcomm (well not so sekrit but certainly not part of Qualcomm's core business) I talked with their VP of product at some conference and he basically lamented that once you sold it to someone you were done. They didn't like selling bug fixes as 'upgrades' (that was just a paid support model) and once you had a working client there wasn't much reason to upgrade. The 'free' ad-supported version had a better revenue future than the purchased one. By the same token these guys have to eat right? So its not like they can do the open source route. They really need to be part of a bigger stable of things in order to make it a business. I did think it would be a good acquisition for Apple as the front end for their gmail killer.
    - cpeterso 14y ago
      > I also couldn't figure out how Sparrow would be able to grow on $10 one time purchases. Can a small company survive on one-time purchases of desktop applications? If Sparrow charged $100, they might have more time to scale up their customers, but they would have fewer customers. Has Y Combinator invested in startups whose primary product was a desktop application?
BlackNapoleon 14y ago
I wish Apple acquired them. iOS Mail needs those gestures more than Google does.
mtgx 14y ago
I haven't used Sparrow, since I don't have an iOS device, but any particular reason why Google thought they needed to buy it? What could Sparrow bring to the Gmail mobile app that Google couldn't do themselves (or well enough)? Or maybe they just wanted it so the competition doesn't get it first, just like Facebook wanted Instagram?
- Adirael 14y ago
  They bought talent. The client is great but I don't see a need in Google for it.
- netcan 14y ago
  Since it sounds like the service itself is being shut down its probably about acquiring the team and (possibly) some bits and pieces of tech.
- atourgates 14y ago
  Sparrow was the only native app that managed to offer a better Gmail experience than the Gmail web app. Google's desktop and phone gmail apps have been generally, not great. Sparrow's was.
- RexRollman 14y ago
  Sparrow isn't iOS only, it also runs on the Mac.
coryjacobsen 14y ago
This is a huge accomplishment for the Sparrow team. Now lets hope Google doesn't do what they do best and ruin this beautiful app.
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  They won't ruin it, because they have announced their intention to stop development.
  - andyfleming 14y ago
    Where did they say that? It says in their announcement that they are going to continue to support it. Do you just mean active development?
    - lobster_johnson 14y ago
      From the announcement: "... we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps." Support is not "development" if you are just fixing outstanding issues, that's "maintenance".
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
cheap 14y ago
IS NOTHING SACRED ANYMORE???
- cheap 14y ago
  Sorry for the caps, it was my initial reaction.
jpxxx 14y ago
Hooray! Now can they also buy BusyCal so that there's at least one non-braindamaged method of talking to Google CalDAV servers on a Mac?
rglover 14y ago
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 what Facebook did with Instagram and keep them working on their product. It would be awesome to see the guts of Sparrow used in a Google branded Gmail client or similar (hopefully that happens, but I'm reluctant based on this statement).
- BlackNapoleon 14y ago
  Agreed. Sparrow needed to be acquired by Apple. Period. Imagine iOS mail with Sparrow's gestures and organization? Fantastic.
  - rogerchucker 14y ago
    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.
    - justauser 14y ago
      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.
      - rogerchucker 14y ago
        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.
cheap 14y ago
Apple Mail sure did miss me. It's welcoming me back with 40% CPU usage.
mmahemoff 14y ago
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.
- OmegaHN 14y ago
  This is one thing that I've thought about Web 2.0 (now that it is in full swing). Countless dollars seem to be going to trying to reinvent the desktop inside the browser, when really the internet should supplement it as an expansion to its capabilities. Dropbox is the best example of this: there is a web client, but Dropbox truly shines as a simple folder that is the same across your devices. It takes the folder system and improves on it, rather than doing away with it altogether.
  - benatkin 14y ago
    DropBox isn't so simple, with Mountain Lion coming. http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-not-on-the-Mac-App-Store http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-not-on-the-Mac-A...
- notatoad 14y ago
  There's always the possibility that these app acquisitions are not to strengthen gmail and docs, but to strengthen Android. Google has just bought the maker of the best email client on iPhone, and announced that they're stopping development of it. To me, that sounds more like a direct attack on the iPhone than a vote of confidence for native apps.
antidaily 14y ago
I hope the Google+ team doesn't get ahold of them before they can fix Gmail and apps.
kposehn 14y ago
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.
- duaneb 14y ago
  > They clearly had the product and following (IMHO) to become something massive. What exactly does 'massive' look like in this case? One-time payments don't offer dependable growth.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
pfortuny 14y ago
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.
ceejayoz 14y ago
Sparrow had a $4.99 (half-off) sale last weekend (https://twitter.com/lifehacker/statuses/223750237490126849 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.
- sammcd 14y ago
  Great software for half off doesn't seem like a scam to me. The app still works.
  - smashing 14y ago
    Maybe $4.99 is a lot of money to him. It could be the amount which makes or breaks his startup. ;)
  - ceejayoz 14y ago
    Timing a sale right before an announcement you're well aware will drop sales numbers off a steep cliff looks pretty deceptive to me.
    - johns 14y ago
      Deals fall apart at the last minute all. the. time. You can't just stop doing business.
      - ceejayoz 14y ago
        You can delay your half-off sale for a week.
      - look_lookatme 14y ago
        So buyers are just a hedge?
    - thematt 14y ago
      It's a standalone app, it's not going to stop functioning. $4.99 is a deal, regardless of whether there would be future versions or not.
goronbjorn 14y ago
This makes me sad as a user, but it seems to be the trend that smaller companies that make great products get acquired by big companies for talent, and those great products disappear.
_cbb1 14y ago
Anyone see a price of how much Google paid Sparrow?
- metafour 14y ago
  Under $25 million. http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172365/sources-google-sparrow-25-million-gmail-client http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172365/sources-google-spa...
jcurbo 14y ago
First Thunderbird then this, what's a native-email-app user to do? I wonder what ever happened to that Letters email app for OS X that people were wanting to build? There was a flurry of activity and complaints about Mail.app and then nothing.
- antimatter 14y ago
  I believe the Letters project died. Sad as I was really looking forward to it.
- msmithstubbs 14y ago
  There is some code for Letters.app is on GitHub, but I don't think it got very far and the last commit was two years ago. https://github.com/ccgus/letters https://github.com/ccgus/letters I remember thinking at the time it sounded quite interesting, so it's a shame. I'm guessing the need for it evaporated with the improvements in Mail.app and the development of other native clients.
- jhawk28 14y ago
  You could check out http://www.postbox-inc.com/ http://www.postbox-inc.com/
  - fceccon 14y ago
    Sadly it only work on OS X and Windows. Anyone knows a good email client for Gnome? Something that does only email.
    - alexyoung 14y ago
      I've always liked this: http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/
    - aidenn0 14y ago
      claws-mail
- alexobenauer 14y ago
mavrc 14y ago
And thus, my dream of finally getting a Sparrow native client for iPad is crushed, like bug. Who wants to build a really super good Gmail client for iPad? Both Google's web-based version as well as their native app are pretty feature-light, and slow, so it seems like there's definitely a market there.
tinomen 14y ago
Congrats on building a fabulous software product then commercializing (abandoning) it. I'm excited for my stale future ahead. I only hope the team was well compensated in this acquisition. - selfish consumer
weslly 14y ago
This is sad and frustrating, guess I'm going back to Mail.app.
yhuhytvh 14y ago
Anyone interested in building a new simple and beautiful iOS email product? I think the market's just opened up.
- AmericanOP 14y ago
  In the works. Email me for more info.
- thematt 14y ago
  Interesting, but I'd say if one small acquisition was the tipping point then the market was already open for others.
- mronge 14y ago
  Check out my iOS/Mac library for a head start: http://www.libmailcore.com http://www.libmailcore.com It uses the same C library that powers Sparrow
Tawheed 14y ago
Email is Dead. Long Live Email.
RexRollman 14y ago
This reminds me of Yahoo's purchase of Konfabulator.
AmericanOP 14y ago
There's a new native email client coming.. email me for more info.
squarecat 14y ago
Where's Atreyu when you need him?! #TheGnothing
esutton 14y ago
What makes this worse is they've been offering a discounted price this past week for their apps. Seems wrong to take money from new users days before your about to stop development.
stevenleeg 14y ago
Just sent the following e-mail to them: I just recently purchased Sparrow for iPhone a few days ago, regardless of the lack of push, since I knew I'd be supporting a small team with developing an awesome app. I was particularly excited for the promise of push notifications coming in the future (I was going to be more than happy to pay for a subscription service). So now that this Google acquisition has occurred, you've said that you are no longer going to be working on features for Sparrow. Does this include previously promised features, such as push? If so, it seems like you've slapped me in the face with a huge middle finger. I paid for both of your applications in hopes of a future of growth for what was already an awesome e-mail client, and now you're telling me that you're killing development? That's a really shitty way to treat your customers if you ask me.
- orenmazor 14y ago
  I don't think Sparrow ever really promised push… http://www.sprw.me/push.php http://www.sprw.me/push.php
  - stevenleeg 14y ago
    > You were more than 16 000 helping us on our Apple quest to get the VoIP privilege. We can’t thank you enough for your support. Unfortunately, Apple has confirmed that they are not willing to do any exception to the rule and that Sparrow will NOT be granted with the privilege. This means we’ll have to do Push on our side and that it will be integrated as a yearly subscription into Sparrow’s future update. From their blog: http://blog.sparrowmailapp.com/ http://blog.sparrowmailapp.com/
SeoxyS 14y ago
Sparrow and Tweetie's acquisition are kind of a slap in the face of the argument for making paid and self-sustaining products that don't rely on a exit event to be in the black. Both were widely-successful paid products, and yet they both managed to get acquired by a mega-company that manages to destroy the product.
thlt 14y ago
Congrat a Viet :)
Aykroyd 14y ago
From their message "We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience. Now we're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google." I wonder if that means that they're going to work on plus. What else would Google think of as a bigger vision for how people communicate?
evanm 14y ago
Great acquisition. Best email client out there.
mwww 14y ago
How many users/downloads did Sparrow have?
timw6n 14y ago
A shame. Sparrow was one of the few players still innovating in desktop email clients, especially now that Thunderbird has been similarly abandoned. They had already brought us custom smtp aliases, which I really came to rely on, and cloud app attachments. Who knows how far the boundaries could've been pushed with another year of independent operation.
glennos 14y ago
Congratulations to the team, but as a user this is extremely disappointing. Sparrow is the only desktop client I considered good enough to use since Calypso back in the late-90s/early-2000s. Google, please do right by your users and put these guys on projects that will deliver as much user value as that of Sparrow.
twodayslate 14y ago
That means they will be getting push notifications now? :P
nebiros 14y ago
I drop Sparrow like 2 months ago, in the desktop version you can't create filters, the iphone version still doesn't have push notifications, even if I paid for both I ended up using Mail.app again, my combo: mailunreadmenu http://www.loganrockmore.com/MailUnreadMenu http://www.loganrockmore.com/MailUnreadMenu (a menu bar application) and this setup for Gmail accounts (http://jeffschuette.com/2012/03/07/setting-up-apple-mail-to-rock-and-roll-with-gmail/ http://jeffschuette.com/2012/03/07/setting-up-apple-mail-to-...), bye bye Sparrow, was fun ¬¬.
BryanB55 14y ago
Wow that sucks. What a classic example of an acquisition killing a great product. I use Sparrow for mail on mac and iphone and like many other sparrow users have mentioned, this really pissed me off. What pissed me off even more was the way sparrow announced it like it was some kind of great accomplishment, maybe for their own wallets but not at all for users. "Full speed ahead!" - What the hell does that mean? They just killed the entire project. More like full speed to nowhere if you ask me.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  "Thanks to all who helped on our jorney" is a good one too.
codex 14y ago
It sounds like the Sparrow guys ran out of money and were bailed out by Google. This is a sad outcome, but not unexpected: plenty of people make "good enough" mail clients and give them away for free. Just because you want a gold-plated email client doesn't mean many other people are willing to pay for it, and monetizing an email client is very difficult without massive scale, and advertising.
ozataman 14y ago
Google, please realize Sparrow has a set of unique values the web app can't and likely won't ever provide, and continue its development.
chrisblackwell 14y ago
I read the news in my Sparrow client, then immediately closed it, and uninstalled it.
- wusher 14y ago
  Why uninstall it? They already got your money.
  - chrisblackwell 14y ago
    No point investing any more time and familiarity with a product that will no longer see updates or bug fixes.
jblock 14y ago
Conflicted. I'm happy for the guys who worked hard and clearly got what they wanted out of this deal, but as a loyal Sparrow user, I feel some sense of betrayal that they're simply going to abandon their products beyond security updates.
ndrake 14y ago
http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/how-to-prepare-for-googles-a.html http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/how-to-prepare-for-googles-...
scottmagdalein 14y ago
1) They sold because they were a funded company and funded companies have to sell. That's how investors make money. http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/sparrow-mac-mail-app/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/sparrow-mac-mail-app/ 2) I highly doubt Sparrow will work with upcoming iOS versions, which means the people that bought it recently have been ripped off.
carsongross 14y ago
Once again, kids: recurring revenue models. It appears to be the only way to build sustainable, quality software these days. I love, love thick clients (even though I'm an ambivelent web guy) but every time I see an app as a one-time $10 or even $99 shot, I think: how are they gonna survive in the long run?
- gurkendoktor 14y ago
  > how are they gonna survive in the long run? In theory: By building the next thick client app and pitching it to their existing customer base. I loved OmniGraffle so OmniFocus was an obvious choice, etc... Apart from games, are there any examples of this business model left?
  - carsongross 14y ago
    Even games... the smart guys are building subscription models. Right now mobile is going through the same discovery phase: a cool app comes out, sells a bunch... then what?
stock_toaster 14y ago
Ok, now that sparrow is dead....any good alternatives?
jrnkntl 14y ago
Happy for the Sparrow folks, not so happy for my fellow users and me. I am using it since the beta and they kept promising from that version on that they would add the one missing feature for me (and a dozen of other users): undo support. I stopped using Sparrow for this only reason; then at 1.6 I started using it again; just to see where it was at; lovely UI but one CPU hogging little app. Sad to see these show-stoppers will now never be picked up in the future Sparrow. Who will be the new kid on the block?
- autodidakto 14y ago
  Here's my one missing feature they planned on but never adding: Increase the (reading) font size. It's stuck at 12pt, which is too small for me. Usability 101, no?
johnchristopher 14y ago
Maybe there is a small chance a window client might shows up in the pipeline :) Anyway, there is a mail client (that began as a project of midori's author) that looks a little bit like sparrow: http://redmine.yorba.org/projects/geary/wiki http://redmine.yorba.org/projects/geary/wiki It's very early in its dev. stage though.
marban 14y ago
The only question that's left is how we can make the Archive button in mail.app to work like it should with gmail. I'd hate going back to mailplane.
zethraeus 14y ago
Is it possible that with this and quickoffice that Google is actively trying to degrade the iOS app market? It's one of the major hurdles that Android has never really gotten over.
dopp 14y ago
If there was a new sparrow-esque app in the market that was drastically better than stock ios mail app, would people buy it?
hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
This is acquisition is simple: if people stop using their web interface, they don't make money on ads. They will either drop the app, incorporate AdWords on it, or integrate with Google Plus instead of Facebook.
archildress 14y ago
Lot of talk here about their lack of recurring revenue models; the interesting thing I think is that they were developing a recurring revenue facet. If you missed it, the problem on iOS is that they couldn't get push email support working (they tried to use the VOIP exception but Apple caught it while review), so the talk was that they would offer a yearly subscription type thing that would somehow enable push email. I'm not sure how much that would have been, but I would have almost certainly subscribed.
marquis 14y ago
For those looking for a replacement: http://postbox-inc http://postbox-inc. I actually just switched a week ago from Sparrow because I wasn't happy with the way it makes unread mail disappear all the time. I'm growing to love PostBox, and the experience is not hugely different.
bsg75 14y ago
Oddly the app was on sale a week ago: http://blog.sparrowmailapp.com/post/27116220357/499sparrow http://blog.sparrowmailapp.com/post/27116220357/499sparrow
mikerice 14y ago
I love how everyone here is complaining but if 90% of you were in that position you probably would have taken the offer.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  I'd quite possibly have taken the offer, but I like to think I wouldn't have tried to gobble up as much final revenue as possible by offering it for half-off while I negotiated to turn it into abandonware.
swaraj 14y ago
Sparrow is the shit
kyro 14y ago
While I certainly understand the frustration being felt (I purchased the app and was hoping for push notifications), I'm sure most people here would've accepted the offer. With all that's been written on how little developers are making on the App and Mac Stores, I highly doubt they were making enough to sustain a team of 5. I'm assuming they're an ambitious group and selling an email app would just have not provided them with the capital and resources to achieve what they want. So they perfect their app and then what? You've pretty much hit the end of that road. Sparrow was up against the native OSX/iOS mail clients, the GMail native and web apps, with the App/Mac Stores as their main distribution channels, which make it nigh impossible to get your app any visibility save the smash hits. All that considered, it makes perfect sense, to me, why they'd accept a Google offer.
ricardobeat 14y ago
How long until they buy Collections or RocketDocs?
bradgessler 14y ago
Honestly, I feel like I got burnt for paying for Sparrow. I finally bought the desktop and iPhone app in an effort to fund a great product, but then Google swoops in and essentially killed it. Its really ashamed to see such a promising product get sucked inside the bowels of Google.
FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
This is good news for Sparrow, but for the users it is anything but. I would hope at least that they don't eventually pull the app. Some of us actually prefer the native experience to the webapp one.
Yaggo 14y ago
Wow, the arrow hitted the heart.
hobin 14y ago
Gee, people, let's chill out for a bit. There's so much anger here that I think my eyebrows were scorched by all the comments. If the previous comments are any indication, you might not want to read my comment if this email client means the world to you. I'm afraid to say that I really don't see the big deal. Let me repeat that: it's an email client. People's days were ruined by this news? Google is stupid and evil and-I-don't-know-what-else because they acquired Sparrow? The developers of Sparrow are evil because they didn't do what you unreasonably expected them to do? You people need a serious reality check if these were your thoughts. Heck, the app didn't even stop working. Now, with all that being said, I can understand a little frustration about knowing for certain that your apparently-favorite app will not be updated anymore. Fine. I get it. But can we cut out approximately 90% of the fury?
- Destroyer661 14y ago
  > But can we cut out approximately 90% of the fury? You have to realize this app existed in the apple-sphere. The user base is part of a very entitlement based generation for the most part. That's why there's so much rage.
kposehn 14y ago
I was talking with a friend and I realized what bugged me so much, and how to sum it up: It feels like the Sparrow team stopped on first base, when the ball is sailing out of the park.
jaxn 14y ago
FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK! This is horrible news. This comment will likely get down voted, but this is my authentic comment on the story. I am having a very negative emotional reaction to the news. Especially the part about not further developing new features (like the iPad app I have been anxiously awaiting).
msie 14y ago
How lucrative is the email client market? Could the makers of Sparrow have survived for a while? I would think that a lot of people are already satisfied with Mail or a web client, and if someone bought a copy of Sparrow they wouldn't be buying another copy for a while. I'm surprised that there are multiple companies out there selling Mac email clients.
andyobryan 14y ago
In regards to the Sparrow going on sale before being sold: 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.
mortenjorck 14y ago
What I want to know is what's happening to LibEtPan, the open-source IMAP library that powers Sparrow. Dinh Viêt Hoà, the other Sparrow co-founder, maintains it, and I wonder if Google will continue to support development of it.
tomflack 14y ago
One thing I loved about sparrow is they charged for their product. I thought that by paying money I was supporting a business. There are loads of similar calibre apps out there they could have tackled with the same gusto they approached email. So, what are the alternatives?
shellox 14y ago
Thats just another example why we shouldn't addict ourself to proprietary software for communication. We really need a good FOSS e-mail client.
scotu 14y ago
don't be absolutist http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ (the general point "do-have-a-business-model-please" is still true, but when I read it I felt something like "you can always trust your friendly for pay app")
myoffe 14y ago
I'm also sad that Sparrow won't be developed any more (I use both Mac and iPhone apps). But if the Sparrow team will have a chance to improve Gmail, then we will all benefit from it. Hopefully, this is the case. Otherwise, it's just annoying.
etfb 14y ago
"Sparrow doesn’t owe you anything. You paid, you got software. They can sell and/or kill it if they want. No right to complain. Sad, true." The callousness of this argument annoys me. Hey there, smug twitterer! The universe doesn't owe you anything! If your mother dies of a sudden brain aneurysm tomorrow, you also have no right to complain! Would you welcome me telling you so? Yes dear, I know. Dead mothers sounds a lot like Godwinism. Whatever. The point remains that the original comment lacks empathy, reason and relevance. It's just a dick being a dick, dickishly.
adambenayoun 14y ago
I wonder what would have happened if the Sparrow team would come out and say "guys we're going to close we don't have enough money". Would all the guys who are yelling "I feel betrayed" support Sparrow with a $10/month recurring plan? I doubt it. I personally think that Sparrow had a chance to sell their business and capitalize on all of the hard work they done so far, let's not forget that this is their business and not a hobby. They need a end game. I won't try to go into details as this is probably all speculation, but monetizing a client in a saturated market with bigger competitors isn't easy. I can understand that many of you 'invested' $5-$10 in sparrow and think you're entitled to free support and lifetime slavery but let's chill a bit. So you've lost $10, big deal. I'm sure you guys have invested more money into more lousy software and haven't say a god damn thing. Sparrow team, good luck, great work, happy to hear that another indie developer made it. Hope to hear more success stories in the future.

502 points by scilro 14y ago

When I pay premium prices for apps it is under the assumption that I am helping the developers maintain and improve the application. If you are hoping to sell, you should price your app at $.99 and hope to get as many users as possible. That also helps me know what your plan is.

da_n 14y ago
While it is a shame to the app effectively killed, calling it premium priced is just a reflection of how the app store has forced developers to push prices to the absolute bottom. Ad-in the fact that they had no recurring revenue model, getting a ton of new users could actually have been a false economy for them. They did not owe users an explanation of their future business plans, that's not how it works.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  > While it is a shame to the app effectively killed, calling it premium priced is just a reflection of how the app store has forced developers to push prices to the absolute bottom. It's an e-mail client. The major competitors are pretty much webmail (free), Outlook Express (free), Outlook (which you'd only use if you already paid for it as part of Office), Thunderbird (free), and Apple Mail (free). So, yes, it's a premium price for an e-mail client.
franzus 14y ago
Premium prices? $9.99? Are you kidding?

scilro 14y ago

Full text of the announcement: We're excited to announce that Sparrow has been acquired by Google! We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience. Now we're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google. We’d like to extend a special thanks to all of our users who have supported us, advised us, given us priceless feedback and allowed us to build a better mail application. While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users. We had an amazing ride and can't thank you enough. Full speed ahead! Dom Leca CEO Sparrow

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

kloncks 14y ago

While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users. Here's hoping that that means my Sparrow app isn't going anywhere...

cjoh 14y ago
It's name will just be changed to "Gmail" in the next release, I suspect.
- dabeeeenster 14y ago
  And the cost will be $0?
  - masklinn 14y ago
    And it will stop being maintained
    - Kiro 14y ago
      Yeah, because Google has no interest in maintaining the official Gmail app...
      - pteromyscus 14y ago
        Google has abandoned tons of stuff and poorly maintains lots of others.
        BlackNapoleon 14y ago
        Agreed. I don't even see how anyone could debate this.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]

SquareWheel 14y ago

Ah, just bought Sparrow for iOS. Expecting it to go freeware shortly. edit: Ah, and they're not going to be adding any new features. http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172222/google-buys-sparrow-mail http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172222/google-buys-sparro...

robin_reala 14y ago
Not everything that Google buys does. SketchUp was never free as far as I can remember.
- protomyth 14y ago
  SketchUp had free and paid versions

HaloZero 14y ago

I would assume this means that Google is going to push even more focus on native app development on the iOS and Mac Platforms. I imagine this was just a talent acquisition.

cheap 14y ago
Your assumptions are wrong but your imagination is accurate.

quarterto 14y ago

I bloody well hope they continue development, and it becomes the official desktop/iPhone client. I love Sparrow, and would hate to see it vanish into the "acquired company" ether.

3am_hackernews 14y ago
I was hoping for the same. But I think they are not going to do any more development on their Sparrow client according to the latest email they sent to the users. Sucks for the current paid users, but hey who cares once they get a million more users and many more $$, right?

lyime 14y ago

Congrats to the team! Well deserved. It's one of the better apps I use daily, both on desktop and mobile. Hope they make it better and don't kill it.

obilgic 14y ago

Any idea how much google paid?

azza-bazoo 14y ago

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.)

radarsat1 14y ago
> the interface really hasn't changed that much since the early days. And why should it? I haven't used Sparrow, but I have no problems with gmail. How is it different / better?
BlackNapoleon 14y ago
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.
- azza-bazoo 14y ago
  > 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.
  - BlackNapoleon 14y ago
    Google invented the entire notion of email streams. Did you forget that? People weren't used to seeing emails that followed like IM conversations.
    - azza-bazoo 14y ago

jph 14y ago

Great to see Google investing in email UX. Sparrow is awesome and bringing the Sparrow UX ideals to Gmail will be a big boost forward. The Sparrow co-founder and CEO Dom Leca discusses Gmail in some detail here... Interviewer: Why can’t Google write a mail client for the iPhone that’s worth a crap? Sparrow CEO: Because they don’t really care about it. I mean, they’re not in the native app business, and all that matters with them is to have an app that is identified as the Gmail app on the iOS App Store for mainstream to use, I think. I mean, they don’t believe at all in native things, which makes sense in relation to the whole company. Interviewer: Right. So they just, they don’t believe in the native thing, or, they probably could deliver it, but they just don’t want to? Sparrow CEO: Oh, yeah, of course. They could deliver something I think far better than Sparrow or the application they released, but they’re just not allocating any resources to this because they think it’s irrelevant. Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/15/interview-dom-leca-of-sparrow-on-solving-the-iphone-mail-client-conundrum/ http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/15/interview-dom-leca-of-...

Aykroyd 14y ago
I hope that this means that they're investing in email UX. That's my optimistic take on the acquisition. My pessimistic take on it is that they're just getting talented developers and product folks and they're going to have them working on something completely different.
juliano_q 14y ago
I agree with him. You just have to use the Android Gmail app to notice that Google can do an awesome native e-mail app if they want. The phone client is so good that many times I prefer to use it than the web even when I am with my notebook.

mattvanhorn 14y ago

Ugh. Say hi to Aardvark (and Dodgeball, and Jaiku) for me.

varunsaini 14y ago

Great acquisition by Google. Will help Google in stream lining it's iPhone and iPad app offering. I believe now, Sparrow will be a free product :)

jamie-chung 14y ago
First thing that came to my mind too. Would be interesting if they still upheld the same pricing model as before.

kyro 14y ago

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.

DouweM 14y ago
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.
- clarky07 14y ago
  There is another way, but you can't keep it open forever. Any app can request to stay open for a short time to do anything it wants after close. I use this for an app that saves data to the cloud. No reason to make the user wait around for the save. You can't stay open forever though which I suspect is what they were doing. Just wanting to point out there is a third option, though not indefinitely.
- thomasjoulin 14y ago
  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 :/

atirip 14y ago

My first reaction was - oh fuck. Am I alone.

simonbarker87 14y ago
Mine was "Shit!" so no you're not alone. It was the same reaction I had to Sofa (the guys behind Versions) selling to facebook
- thisisblurry 14y ago
  Except Sofa sold/transferred both Versions and Kaleidoscope to Black Pixel to continue to be maintained. I don't see that happening this time.
jonkratz 14y ago
Yeah, I feel the same. Obviously, they had an offer they couldn't refuse, I'm sure, and I don't blame them for taking it. But that said, I love Sparrow and am saddened that it could end that fast.
untog 14y ago
Why? If you use Sparrow, you use Gmail. So it's an odd place for a Google-hater to be.
- biafra 14y ago
  I don't. I use my own IMAP4 server with Sparrow.
carlsednaoui 14y ago
Same here. Im always afraid that an acquisition will turn a service I love into some long-forgotten lines of codes as the team works on new projects.
shadesandcolour 14y ago
Right there with you. Sparrow is effectively done now. Gmail itself doesn't need the improvements, the clients need to improve, which won't happen if they join the gmail team.

mattvanhorn 14y ago

I can't wait unti they bring all of Google's UI/UX power to Sparrow. I'm sick of being able to get to my unread email so quickly.

Spittie 14y ago

Would be nice to see a port to ChromeOS or as a webapp.

brajkovic 14y ago
I think you grossly missed the point of Sparrow—as a webapp, it's 100% useless, because the current Gmail interface exists. At best, they can take some UI/UX elements from Sparrow and incorporate them into Gmail as is, but porting it as a webapp or porting it to ChromeOS are both defeating the point of the app and platform, respectively.

imjoel 14y ago

We can say "Bon voyage" to ever seeing a Sparrow iPad app. shakes fist

mmuro 14y ago

Damn, it was nice knowing you Sparrow. I seriously hope they don't let Google's UI/UX designers anywhere near Sparrow.

disbelief 14y ago
Normally I would have agreed with you, but have you seen the latest Gmail native client for Android? It is hands-down the best mobile mail client I've ever used. Attractive and incredibly intuitive. Someone at Google has been taking their UX vitamins.
myko 14y ago
This is some pretty anti-Google flame baiting. What kind of design qualifications do you have? Have you even seen the Gmail app on Android? Gmail is also one of the easiest to use, nicest web apps ever created.

gaving 14y ago

How incredibly awful.

untog 14y ago

This must have been Sparrow's game plan from day one, so kudos to them. Hopefully it'll become the official Gmail app for iOS, get push support, and we can all enjoy the benefits.

cheap 14y ago
Steve Job's game plan was also to sellou.... oh wait, it wasn't.

trevorturk 14y ago

I want a refund.

ceejayoz 14y ago
I requested one from the App Store support site.
- 3am_hackernews 14y ago
  I did too and got one within 4 hours.
  - john2x 14y ago
    Care to share how you did it? Never tried asking for a refund on the App Store before. I bought it last week during the sale and feel a bit cheated. Thanks.
    - ceejayoz 14y ago
      http://www.apple.com/support/mac/app-store/contact/ http://www.apple.com/support/mac/app-store/contact/, submit a "Billing - Other" issue, and you'll hear back quite quickly. I've always had good experiences with them.

kyleslattery 14y ago

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 we’ll be busy with new projects at Google, we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to build products for all of our wonderful users who have supported us over the years. We can't thank you enough. We look forward to working on some new and exciting projects at Google! Dom Leca CEO Sparrow

pwenzel 14y ago
This is extremely sad. I use Sparrow all day, every single day.
- imd23 14y ago
  Same here. I use it even for chat! It's an awesome app, so well designed and programmed. Makes me sad.
cheap 14y ago
Key point, "we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps".
markgx 14y ago
Looks like we can kiss getting push notifications on iPhone and the teased iPad version goodbye.
- RKearney 14y ago
  And I just purchased that app yesterday. I'll try and pursue getting a refund from Apple, although I'm not sure how successful I will be in the process. It's aggravating seeing potentially amazing start-up companies get purchased by a large company and then everything they've done seemingly ceases to exist. Also, how many companies that Google acquires eventually just die off?

simonbarker87 14y ago

Congratulations but... Argh, I love Sparrow. Why couldn't you do the 37 Signals/Panic/Mail Chimp thing and not sell and just be a nice profitable company that provides some consistency - ohwell.

carsongross 14y ago
They didn't have a recurring revenue model.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  This. Like everyone else I think the App Store lost a great app today. However, I also couldn't figure out how Sparrow would be able to grow on $10 one time purchases. Having been a big fan of Eudora back when it was sekrit hacker group at Qualcomm (well not so sekrit but certainly not part of Qualcomm's core business) I talked with their VP of product at some conference and he basically lamented that once you sold it to someone you were done. They didn't like selling bug fixes as 'upgrades' (that was just a paid support model) and once you had a working client there wasn't much reason to upgrade. The 'free' ad-supported version had a better revenue future than the purchased one. By the same token these guys have to eat right? So its not like they can do the open source route. They really need to be part of a bigger stable of things in order to make it a business. I did think it would be a good acquisition for Apple as the front end for their gmail killer.
  - cpeterso 14y ago
    > I also couldn't figure out how Sparrow would be able to grow on $10 one time purchases. Can a small company survive on one-time purchases of desktop applications? If Sparrow charged $100, they might have more time to scale up their customers, but they would have fewer customers. Has Y Combinator invested in startups whose primary product was a desktop application?

BlackNapoleon 14y ago

I wish Apple acquired them. iOS Mail needs those gestures more than Google does.

mtgx 14y ago

I haven't used Sparrow, since I don't have an iOS device, but any particular reason why Google thought they needed to buy it? What could Sparrow bring to the Gmail mobile app that Google couldn't do themselves (or well enough)? Or maybe they just wanted it so the competition doesn't get it first, just like Facebook wanted Instagram?

Adirael 14y ago
They bought talent. The client is great but I don't see a need in Google for it.
netcan 14y ago
Since it sounds like the service itself is being shut down its probably about acquiring the team and (possibly) some bits and pieces of tech.
atourgates 14y ago
Sparrow was the only native app that managed to offer a better Gmail experience than the Gmail web app. Google's desktop and phone gmail apps have been generally, not great. Sparrow's was.
RexRollman 14y ago
Sparrow isn't iOS only, it also runs on the Mac.

coryjacobsen 14y ago

This is a huge accomplishment for the Sparrow team. Now lets hope Google doesn't do what they do best and ruin this beautiful app.

lobster_johnson 14y ago
They won't ruin it, because they have announced their intention to stop development.
- andyfleming 14y ago
  Where did they say that? It says in their announcement that they are going to continue to support it. Do you just mean active development?
  - lobster_johnson 14y ago
    From the announcement: "... we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps." Support is not "development" if you are just fixing outstanding issues, that's "maintenance".
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

cheap 14y ago

IS NOTHING SACRED ANYMORE???

cheap 14y ago
Sorry for the caps, it was my initial reaction.

jpxxx 14y ago

Hooray! Now can they also buy BusyCal so that there's at least one non-braindamaged method of talking to Google CalDAV servers on a Mac?

rglover 14y ago

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 what Facebook did with Instagram and keep them working on their product. It would be awesome to see the guts of Sparrow used in a Google branded Gmail client or similar (hopefully that happens, but I'm reluctant based on this statement).

BlackNapoleon 14y ago
Agreed. Sparrow needed to be acquired by Apple. Period. Imagine iOS mail with Sparrow's gestures and organization? Fantastic.
- rogerchucker 14y ago
  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.
  - justauser 14y ago
    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.
    - rogerchucker 14y ago
      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.

cheap 14y ago

Apple Mail sure did miss me. It's welcoming me back with 40% CPU usage.

mmahemoff 14y ago

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.

OmegaHN 14y ago
This is one thing that I've thought about Web 2.0 (now that it is in full swing). Countless dollars seem to be going to trying to reinvent the desktop inside the browser, when really the internet should supplement it as an expansion to its capabilities. Dropbox is the best example of this: there is a web client, but Dropbox truly shines as a simple folder that is the same across your devices. It takes the folder system and improves on it, rather than doing away with it altogether.
- benatkin 14y ago
  DropBox isn't so simple, with Mountain Lion coming. http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-not-on-the-Mac-App-Store http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-not-on-the-Mac-A...
notatoad 14y ago
There's always the possibility that these app acquisitions are not to strengthen gmail and docs, but to strengthen Android. Google has just bought the maker of the best email client on iPhone, and announced that they're stopping development of it. To me, that sounds more like a direct attack on the iPhone than a vote of confidence for native apps.

antidaily 14y ago

I hope the Google+ team doesn't get ahold of them before they can fix Gmail and apps.

kposehn 14y ago

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.

duaneb 14y ago
> They clearly had the product and following (IMHO) to become something massive. What exactly does 'massive' look like in this case? One-time payments don't offer dependable growth.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

pfortuny 14y ago

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.

ceejayoz 14y ago

Sparrow had a $4.99 (half-off) sale last weekend (https://twitter.com/lifehacker/statuses/223750237490126849 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.

sammcd 14y ago
Great software for half off doesn't seem like a scam to me. The app still works.
- smashing 14y ago
  Maybe $4.99 is a lot of money to him. It could be the amount which makes or breaks his startup. ;)
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  Timing a sale right before an announcement you're well aware will drop sales numbers off a steep cliff looks pretty deceptive to me.
  - johns 14y ago
    Deals fall apart at the last minute all. the. time. You can't just stop doing business.
    - ceejayoz 14y ago
      You can delay your half-off sale for a week.
    - look_lookatme 14y ago
      So buyers are just a hedge?
  - thematt 14y ago
    It's a standalone app, it's not going to stop functioning. $4.99 is a deal, regardless of whether there would be future versions or not.

goronbjorn 14y ago

This makes me sad as a user, but it seems to be the trend that smaller companies that make great products get acquired by big companies for talent, and those great products disappear.

_cbb1 14y ago

Anyone see a price of how much Google paid Sparrow?

metafour 14y ago
Under $25 million. http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172365/sources-google-sparrow-25-million-gmail-client http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172365/sources-google-spa...

jcurbo 14y ago

First Thunderbird then this, what's a native-email-app user to do? I wonder what ever happened to that Letters email app for OS X that people were wanting to build? There was a flurry of activity and complaints about Mail.app and then nothing.

antimatter 14y ago
I believe the Letters project died. Sad as I was really looking forward to it.
msmithstubbs 14y ago
There is some code for Letters.app is on GitHub, but I don't think it got very far and the last commit was two years ago. https://github.com/ccgus/letters https://github.com/ccgus/letters I remember thinking at the time it sounded quite interesting, so it's a shame. I'm guessing the need for it evaporated with the improvements in Mail.app and the development of other native clients.
jhawk28 14y ago
You could check out http://www.postbox-inc.com/ http://www.postbox-inc.com/
- fceccon 14y ago
  Sadly it only work on OS X and Windows. Anyone knows a good email client for Gnome? Something that does only email.
  - alexyoung 14y ago
    I've always liked this: http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/
  - aidenn0 14y ago
    claws-mail
alexobenauer 14y ago

mavrc 14y ago

And thus, my dream of finally getting a Sparrow native client for iPad is crushed, like bug. Who wants to build a really super good Gmail client for iPad? Both Google's web-based version as well as their native app are pretty feature-light, and slow, so it seems like there's definitely a market there.

tinomen 14y ago

Congrats on building a fabulous software product then commercializing (abandoning) it. I'm excited for my stale future ahead. I only hope the team was well compensated in this acquisition. - selfish consumer

weslly 14y ago

This is sad and frustrating, guess I'm going back to Mail.app.

yhuhytvh 14y ago

Anyone interested in building a new simple and beautiful iOS email product? I think the market's just opened up.

AmericanOP 14y ago
In the works. Email me for more info.
thematt 14y ago
Interesting, but I'd say if one small acquisition was the tipping point then the market was already open for others.
mronge 14y ago
Check out my iOS/Mac library for a head start: http://www.libmailcore.com http://www.libmailcore.com It uses the same C library that powers Sparrow

Tawheed 14y ago

Email is Dead. Long Live Email.

RexRollman 14y ago

This reminds me of Yahoo's purchase of Konfabulator.

AmericanOP 14y ago

There's a new native email client coming.. email me for more info.

squarecat 14y ago

Where's Atreyu when you need him?! #TheGnothing

esutton 14y ago

What makes this worse is they've been offering a discounted price this past week for their apps. Seems wrong to take money from new users days before your about to stop development.

stevenleeg 14y ago

Just sent the following e-mail to them: I just recently purchased Sparrow for iPhone a few days ago, regardless of the lack of push, since I knew I'd be supporting a small team with developing an awesome app. I was particularly excited for the promise of push notifications coming in the future (I was going to be more than happy to pay for a subscription service). So now that this Google acquisition has occurred, you've said that you are no longer going to be working on features for Sparrow. Does this include previously promised features, such as push? If so, it seems like you've slapped me in the face with a huge middle finger. I paid for both of your applications in hopes of a future of growth for what was already an awesome e-mail client, and now you're telling me that you're killing development? That's a really shitty way to treat your customers if you ask me.

orenmazor 14y ago
I don't think Sparrow ever really promised push… http://www.sprw.me/push.php http://www.sprw.me/push.php
- stevenleeg 14y ago
  > You were more than 16 000 helping us on our Apple quest to get the VoIP privilege. We can’t thank you enough for your support. Unfortunately, Apple has confirmed that they are not willing to do any exception to the rule and that Sparrow will NOT be granted with the privilege. This means we’ll have to do Push on our side and that it will be integrated as a yearly subscription into Sparrow’s future update. From their blog: http://blog.sparrowmailapp.com/ http://blog.sparrowmailapp.com/

SeoxyS 14y ago

Sparrow and Tweetie's acquisition are kind of a slap in the face of the argument for making paid and self-sustaining products that don't rely on a exit event to be in the black. Both were widely-successful paid products, and yet they both managed to get acquired by a mega-company that manages to destroy the product.

thlt 14y ago

Congrat a Viet :)

Aykroyd 14y ago

From their message "We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience. Now we're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google." I wonder if that means that they're going to work on plus. What else would Google think of as a bigger vision for how people communicate?

evanm 14y ago

Great acquisition. Best email client out there.

mwww 14y ago

How many users/downloads did Sparrow have?

timw6n 14y ago

A shame. Sparrow was one of the few players still innovating in desktop email clients, especially now that Thunderbird has been similarly abandoned. They had already brought us custom smtp aliases, which I really came to rely on, and cloud app attachments. Who knows how far the boundaries could've been pushed with another year of independent operation.

glennos 14y ago

Congratulations to the team, but as a user this is extremely disappointing. Sparrow is the only desktop client I considered good enough to use since Calypso back in the late-90s/early-2000s. Google, please do right by your users and put these guys on projects that will deliver as much user value as that of Sparrow.

twodayslate 14y ago

That means they will be getting push notifications now? :P

nebiros 14y ago

I drop Sparrow like 2 months ago, in the desktop version you can't create filters, the iphone version still doesn't have push notifications, even if I paid for both I ended up using Mail.app again, my combo: mailunreadmenu http://www.loganrockmore.com/MailUnreadMenu http://www.loganrockmore.com/MailUnreadMenu (a menu bar application) and this setup for Gmail accounts (http://jeffschuette.com/2012/03/07/setting-up-apple-mail-to-rock-and-roll-with-gmail/ http://jeffschuette.com/2012/03/07/setting-up-apple-mail-to-...), bye bye Sparrow, was fun ¬¬.

BryanB55 14y ago

Wow that sucks. What a classic example of an acquisition killing a great product. I use Sparrow for mail on mac and iphone and like many other sparrow users have mentioned, this really pissed me off. What pissed me off even more was the way sparrow announced it like it was some kind of great accomplishment, maybe for their own wallets but not at all for users. "Full speed ahead!" - What the hell does that mean? They just killed the entire project. More like full speed to nowhere if you ask me.

ricardobeat 14y ago
"Thanks to all who helped on our jorney" is a good one too.

codex 14y ago

It sounds like the Sparrow guys ran out of money and were bailed out by Google. This is a sad outcome, but not unexpected: plenty of people make "good enough" mail clients and give them away for free. Just because you want a gold-plated email client doesn't mean many other people are willing to pay for it, and monetizing an email client is very difficult without massive scale, and advertising.

ozataman 14y ago

Google, please realize Sparrow has a set of unique values the web app can't and likely won't ever provide, and continue its development.

chrisblackwell 14y ago

I read the news in my Sparrow client, then immediately closed it, and uninstalled it.

wusher 14y ago
Why uninstall it? They already got your money.
- chrisblackwell 14y ago
  No point investing any more time and familiarity with a product that will no longer see updates or bug fixes.

jblock 14y ago

Conflicted. I'm happy for the guys who worked hard and clearly got what they wanted out of this deal, but as a loyal Sparrow user, I feel some sense of betrayal that they're simply going to abandon their products beyond security updates.

ndrake 14y ago

http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/how-to-prepare-for-googles-a.html http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/how-to-prepare-for-googles-...

scottmagdalein 14y ago

1) They sold because they were a funded company and funded companies have to sell. That's how investors make money. http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/sparrow-mac-mail-app/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/sparrow-mac-mail-app/ 2) I highly doubt Sparrow will work with upcoming iOS versions, which means the people that bought it recently have been ripped off.

carsongross 14y ago

Once again, kids: recurring revenue models. It appears to be the only way to build sustainable, quality software these days. I love, love thick clients (even though I'm an ambivelent web guy) but every time I see an app as a one-time $10 or even $99 shot, I think: how are they gonna survive in the long run?

gurkendoktor 14y ago
> how are they gonna survive in the long run? In theory: By building the next thick client app and pitching it to their existing customer base. I loved OmniGraffle so OmniFocus was an obvious choice, etc... Apart from games, are there any examples of this business model left?
- carsongross 14y ago
  Even games... the smart guys are building subscription models. Right now mobile is going through the same discovery phase: a cool app comes out, sells a bunch... then what?

stock_toaster 14y ago

Ok, now that sparrow is dead....any good alternatives?

jrnkntl 14y ago

Happy for the Sparrow folks, not so happy for my fellow users and me. I am using it since the beta and they kept promising from that version on that they would add the one missing feature for me (and a dozen of other users): undo support. I stopped using Sparrow for this only reason; then at 1.6 I started using it again; just to see where it was at; lovely UI but one CPU hogging little app. Sad to see these show-stoppers will now never be picked up in the future Sparrow. Who will be the new kid on the block?

autodidakto 14y ago
Here's my one missing feature they planned on but never adding: Increase the (reading) font size. It's stuck at 12pt, which is too small for me. Usability 101, no?

johnchristopher 14y ago

Maybe there is a small chance a window client might shows up in the pipeline :) Anyway, there is a mail client (that began as a project of midori's author) that looks a little bit like sparrow: http://redmine.yorba.org/projects/geary/wiki http://redmine.yorba.org/projects/geary/wiki It's very early in its dev. stage though.

marban 14y ago

The only question that's left is how we can make the Archive button in mail.app to work like it should with gmail. I'd hate going back to mailplane.

zethraeus 14y ago

Is it possible that with this and quickoffice that Google is actively trying to degrade the iOS app market? It's one of the major hurdles that Android has never really gotten over.

dopp 14y ago

If there was a new sparrow-esque app in the market that was drastically better than stock ios mail app, would people buy it?

hcarvalhoalves 14y ago

This is acquisition is simple: if people stop using their web interface, they don't make money on ads. They will either drop the app, incorporate AdWords on it, or integrate with Google Plus instead of Facebook.

archildress 14y ago

Lot of talk here about their lack of recurring revenue models; the interesting thing I think is that they were developing a recurring revenue facet. If you missed it, the problem on iOS is that they couldn't get push email support working (they tried to use the VOIP exception but Apple caught it while review), so the talk was that they would offer a yearly subscription type thing that would somehow enable push email. I'm not sure how much that would have been, but I would have almost certainly subscribed.

marquis 14y ago

For those looking for a replacement: http://postbox-inc http://postbox-inc. I actually just switched a week ago from Sparrow because I wasn't happy with the way it makes unread mail disappear all the time. I'm growing to love PostBox, and the experience is not hugely different.

bsg75 14y ago

Oddly the app was on sale a week ago: http://blog.sparrowmailapp.com/post/27116220357/499sparrow http://blog.sparrowmailapp.com/post/27116220357/499sparrow

mikerice 14y ago

I love how everyone here is complaining but if 90% of you were in that position you probably would have taken the offer.

ceejayoz 14y ago
I'd quite possibly have taken the offer, but I like to think I wouldn't have tried to gobble up as much final revenue as possible by offering it for half-off while I negotiated to turn it into abandonware.

swaraj 14y ago

Sparrow is the shit

kyro 14y ago

While I certainly understand the frustration being felt (I purchased the app and was hoping for push notifications), I'm sure most people here would've accepted the offer. With all that's been written on how little developers are making on the App and Mac Stores, I highly doubt they were making enough to sustain a team of 5. I'm assuming they're an ambitious group and selling an email app would just have not provided them with the capital and resources to achieve what they want. So they perfect their app and then what? You've pretty much hit the end of that road. Sparrow was up against the native OSX/iOS mail clients, the GMail native and web apps, with the App/Mac Stores as their main distribution channels, which make it nigh impossible to get your app any visibility save the smash hits. All that considered, it makes perfect sense, to me, why they'd accept a Google offer.

ricardobeat 14y ago

How long until they buy Collections or RocketDocs?

bradgessler 14y ago

Honestly, I feel like I got burnt for paying for Sparrow. I finally bought the desktop and iPhone app in an effort to fund a great product, but then Google swoops in and essentially killed it. Its really ashamed to see such a promising product get sucked inside the bowels of Google.

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago

This is good news for Sparrow, but for the users it is anything but. I would hope at least that they don't eventually pull the app. Some of us actually prefer the native experience to the webapp one.

Yaggo 14y ago

Wow, the arrow hitted the heart.

hobin 14y ago

Gee, people, let's chill out for a bit. There's so much anger here that I think my eyebrows were scorched by all the comments. If the previous comments are any indication, you might not want to read my comment if this email client means the world to you. I'm afraid to say that I really don't see the big deal. Let me repeat that: it's an email client. People's days were ruined by this news? Google is stupid and evil and-I-don't-know-what-else because they acquired Sparrow? The developers of Sparrow are evil because they didn't do what you unreasonably expected them to do? You people need a serious reality check if these were your thoughts. Heck, the app didn't even stop working. Now, with all that being said, I can understand a little frustration about knowing for certain that your apparently-favorite app will not be updated anymore. Fine. I get it. But can we cut out approximately 90% of the fury?

Destroyer661 14y ago
> But can we cut out approximately 90% of the fury? You have to realize this app existed in the apple-sphere. The user base is part of a very entitlement based generation for the most part. That's why there's so much rage.

kposehn 14y ago

I was talking with a friend and I realized what bugged me so much, and how to sum it up: It feels like the Sparrow team stopped on first base, when the ball is sailing out of the park.

jaxn 14y ago

FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK! This is horrible news. This comment will likely get down voted, but this is my authentic comment on the story. I am having a very negative emotional reaction to the news. Especially the part about not further developing new features (like the iPad app I have been anxiously awaiting).

msie 14y ago

How lucrative is the email client market? Could the makers of Sparrow have survived for a while? I would think that a lot of people are already satisfied with Mail or a web client, and if someone bought a copy of Sparrow they wouldn't be buying another copy for a while. I'm surprised that there are multiple companies out there selling Mac email clients.

andyobryan 14y ago

In regards to the Sparrow going on sale before being sold: 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.

mortenjorck 14y ago

What I want to know is what's happening to LibEtPan, the open-source IMAP library that powers Sparrow. Dinh Viêt Hoà, the other Sparrow co-founder, maintains it, and I wonder if Google will continue to support development of it.

tomflack 14y ago

One thing I loved about sparrow is they charged for their product. I thought that by paying money I was supporting a business. There are loads of similar calibre apps out there they could have tackled with the same gusto they approached email. So, what are the alternatives?

shellox 14y ago

Thats just another example why we shouldn't addict ourself to proprietary software for communication. We really need a good FOSS e-mail client.

scotu 14y ago

don't be absolutist http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ (the general point "do-have-a-business-model-please" is still true, but when I read it I felt something like "you can always trust your friendly for pay app")

myoffe 14y ago

I'm also sad that Sparrow won't be developed any more (I use both Mac and iPhone apps). But if the Sparrow team will have a chance to improve Gmail, then we will all benefit from it. Hopefully, this is the case. Otherwise, it's just annoying.

etfb 14y ago

"Sparrow doesn’t owe you anything. You paid, you got software. They can sell and/or kill it if they want. No right to complain. Sad, true." The callousness of this argument annoys me. Hey there, smug twitterer! The universe doesn't owe you anything! If your mother dies of a sudden brain aneurysm tomorrow, you also have no right to complain! Would you welcome me telling you so? Yes dear, I know. Dead mothers sounds a lot like Godwinism. Whatever. The point remains that the original comment lacks empathy, reason and relevance. It's just a dick being a dick, dickishly.

adambenayoun 14y ago

I wonder what would have happened if the Sparrow team would come out and say "guys we're going to close we don't have enough money". Would all the guys who are yelling "I feel betrayed" support Sparrow with a $10/month recurring plan? I doubt it. I personally think that Sparrow had a chance to sell their business and capitalize on all of the hard work they done so far, let's not forget that this is their business and not a hobby. They need a end game. I won't try to go into details as this is probably all speculation, but monetizing a client in a saturated market with bigger competitors isn't easy. I can understand that many of you 'invested' $5-$10 in sparrow and think you're entitled to free support and lifetime slavery but let's chill a bit. So you've lost $10, big deal. I'm sure you guys have invested more money into more lousy software and haven't say a god damn thing. Sparrow team, good luck, great work, happy to hear that another indie developer made it. Hope to hear more success stories in the future.