Email startup Sparrow has been acquired by Google. The company's CEO Dom Leca announced the news on the company's site and Twitter account this morning, saying that the team behind the popular iOS and Mac email client will be joining the Gmail team to "accomplish a bigger vision".
Exactly what that new vision entails is unclear. So far the company been entirely Apple-centric, launching in February 2011 as it sought to capitalize on the rather poor Gmail experience offered to iOS users at the time – an official app didn't arrive for Apple's mobile platform until November last year and the spartan email client that ships with the iPhone and iPad left much to be desired for Gmail users. Sparrow became the top paid and top grossing app in less than one day.
According to a statement sent to 9to5Mac, the team behind Sparrow will continue to make their existing apps available and provide support as well as critical updates to our users, but no new features will be added going forward. Apparently they will be busy with new projects at Google instead, which could mean the focus will shift solely to Android, or simply that the Sparrow email client is no more.
Either way it's bad news for existing users of Sparrow. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.