I wouldn't be surprised at all if an impending Windows client was part of the timing for this deal. A resurgence of people using stand alone clients on PCs that

I wouldn't be surprised at all if an impending Windows client was part of the timing for this deal. A resurgence of people using stand alone clients on PCs that don't display ads could have been a big problem for Google's business model. If users really demand stand-alone clients I think Google could reverse course and re-release Sparrow with ad support in the near future. I like Sparrow but it's nothing so special that it cannot be easily cloned. Google won't be able to just take that option off the table unless they want to find ways to lock-out third party clients from utilizing extended GMail functionality.