reMail: Google buys awesome iPhone app, kills it

The owners killed it by selling it to google, not google.

reMail is a phenomenal product. Many congratulations Gabor. I hope we will get to see its awesomeness in a Gmail iPhone app!

More likely in a Gmail Android app, at this point.

I've never heard about it before now, and it's already out of the AppStore. Now I'm very much interested, but can't check it out at all.

As much as I like my iPhone it sucks that you can't install random applications from any website like you can on every other civilized smartphone platform. People need to get over the AppStore-concept pronto, at least as the only option available.

As for Google's actions here, I agree they do seem rather dubious and while I can see how they don't want liability and want to do updates/bug-fixes on a paid(?) product they are no longer interested in developing, it certainly doesn't feel like they are follow their so-called do no evil mantra.

If Apple doesn't want to ditch the App Store model they could instead offer an iTunes Store widget/checkout system for developers to embed into their sites. Click Buy on the site, authenticate on iTunes, and the iPhone gets a Push to automatically install the app over 3G/Wifi. I'm surprised they haven't done it yet.