Google just bought Sparrow and killed it

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Corporate News, Google, Software

The ultra-popular Sparrow mail client is now dead. This morning, Google announced that it had acquired the company and team behind what many called the best Mac and iOS Gmail client. It's great for Google, and well-deserved for the Sparrow team, but as a user, it's disappointing. The company was set to release Sparrow for iPad very shortly, but today Google confirmed that there will be no new updates to the Sparrow apps, nor will it be released for any new platforms. We assume that this means the iPad client is now off the table.

We suspect that the crew behind Sparrow will be rolled into the Gmail team, and we'd even bet that we will see the official Gmail apps for Android and iOS become rebranded and fully-integrated versions of what Sparrow was. If you missed out on Sparrow, you can still get it on the App Store for the time being.

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.