Google Acquires the Team at Sparrow

If you’re a Mac user chances are that you’ve heard of or even use the email client Sparrow on your computer or mobile iOS device. Sparrow is a minimalist mail application that launched 2 years ago. Back then it gained 42,000 downloads in just 5 days and they are making headlines again because they have been acquired by Google.

As one would expect, they have been asked to join the Gmail team at 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,” said Dom Leca, CEO of Sparrow, in a statement on the company’s website. “Now we’re joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google.”

Google has stated their respect and admiration for the team at Sparrow and what they’ve accomplished and look forward to having them work on ‘new projects’. While the new projects will likely take up the team’s time, Sparrow has said that they will still have the app available and continue to support it.

It is a rather interesting acquisition for Google but there is no definitive answer as to why. Perhaps Google needs some help revamping their struggling Gmail iOS app. They may even be putting the Sparrow team to work in developing a similar client for Android. We can only speculate as to what the Gmail team is up to since ‘new projects’ is about as vague as one can get.

No details have been given as to how much Sparrow was acquired for, but it is needless to say that they have come a long way since the original launch and hopefully it won’t be too long until we see what these ‘new projects’ turn out to be.