Google has quietly removed both the iOS and Mac versions of its Sparrow email apps from Apple's App Stores, amid reports the company is shifting to focus more intently on its revamped Inbox by Gmail app (via TechCrunch).
The company bought alternative email client app Sparrow back in 2012 and launched Inbox by Gmail to select users last fall, with a wider release earlier this year.
At the time of its launch, Sparrow offered a unique and accessible email client that made it popular with a wide audience. Google's acquisition saw the Sparrow team focusing on non-Sparrow related projects, and the app's lack of continued developer support saw it nosedive in the App Store rankings in the years since.
Sparrow flying away for good shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, but it has been a long time coming. At the time of Google’s acquisition in 2012, reportedly for under $25 million, Sparrow/Google more or less stopped big developments but kept the apps operational and pledged support for existing users.
The Sparrow iOS app never received iOS 8 support and the Mac App was never updated after the acquisition at all, so Google's removal of the apps from the storefront isn't too shocking. Some of that same Sparrow team, including product designer Jean-Marc Denis, have gone on to help Google out with the new Inbox app.
Inbox by Gmail is available to download for free from the App Store. [Direct Link]
Top Rated Comments
So money makes people right? Rich people never make poor decisions? A poorer person is incapable of a better decision than a rich person? Bad decisions have never been made in rich companies?
Remember that decisions are made 'in' companies, not 'by' them. Companies consist of thousands of human beings who will be responsible for different things, miscommunicate or misjudge things from time to time, and who are, on average, not so significantly richer than you or I that their ideas become infallible. Everybody makes mistakes. Even those with money.
As for Sparrow, the whole reason it exists is because the official Gmail app on iOS is so dreadful that somebody decided to make their own Gmail app. Inbox is interesting, but I wish Google would make a really good, normal, official Gmail app.
Yeah, comparing a giant corporation's wealth to a single person's is reasonable.... He's right too. Google attempts a ton of stuff and then abandons things quickly when they don't work out fast. It's their prerogative but it frustrates users.
Siri
TestFlight
Swell
Lala
Spotsetter
Prss
Matcha
Pure evil. Look at all these companies Google acquired and shuttered. :rolleyes: