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Comment by kyleslattery | Hacker News Reader

The email Sparrow is sending out, looks like there won't be any future feature additions:

  Hello,

  We're excited to let you know that Sparrow has been
  acquired by Google! You can view our public announcement
  here, but I wanted to reach out directly to make sure you
  were aware of the news.

  We will continue to make available our existing products,
  and we will provide support and critical updates to our
  users. However, as we’ll be busy with new projects at
  Google, we do not plan to release new features for the
  Sparrow apps.

  It’s been an honor and a pleasure to build products for all
  of our wonderful users who have supported us over the
  years. We can't thank you enough.
  We look forward to working on some new and exciting
  projects at Google!

  Dom Leca
  CEO
  Sparrow

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As someone who bought Sparrow on the day it was released - and is in love with it - this feels like a big middle finger to the customers who have been supporting them.

The core of my disappointment is the expectation of future development that comes with buying into a relatively new piece of software. I didn't buy Sparrow thinking I was paying for a piece of software that was feature-complete. I bought Sparrow mail as a piece of innovative software along with the promise of lots of great future updates to come.

Now, those future updates are done, because Google killed them by acquihiring the Sparrow team.

It feels like more and more, when buying into a new exciting project, the risk is less that the project will fail on its own, and more that it'll be destroyed by an acquihire. Some day, I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a barrier to startups acquiring dedicated new users.

Now imagine if you'd bought it last weekend in their half-off sale. https://twitter.com/lifehacker/statuses/223750237490126849

"Let's make as much money from our abandonware as possible before we have to tell everyone it's abandonware."

That's when I finally bought-in. The thing has a critical bug with iOS6 ... no clue if it'll ever get resolved.

I'm sure that will go under "critical updates".

If you 'critical' bug is about the rendering of email on one column... looks like latest beta 3 is solving that.

Critical bug? You are running a beta version of iOS which you shouldn't use todo real work - its hardly critical if the software isn't finished yet!

Well said. We're seeing a lot of "ship and dump" from startups these days. I'm to the point now where I don't recommend a startup to friends and family or use for business purposes unless their product is self-hostable(and release of source code upon an acquisition or corporate dissolution) or open-source. As you can imagine, the number of products I recommend has dwindled to almost nothing since I've been burned so much myself.

Can you give examples of what you didn't recommend for the reasons stated?

Unless the product or service meets the qualifications I mentioned then you can presume I'm not going to recommend it. Some companies that have been acquired have "done right" and released their product as open source afterwards. I would like to see more companies make this part of their agreement before purchase or use. While I'm comfortable with many things technical, many are not but open-sourcing a popular product will more likely than not allow those non-technical users to just pick up the use of that product with other providers.

A recent example is from Moxie's company Whispersystems and the open-sourcing of their Red Phone product. This came after their acquisition/sale by Twitter.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4256801

Does all of this greatly reduce my access to the latest and greatest? Yes it does but then often what is portrayed as the greatest by popularity is not necessarily a great product. And one further note of clarification, if this service is meant to be consumed in a disposable nature then obviously I've got no qualms about something like that as I enjoy actively participating in the world. There's a reason for pragmatism.

You need to chill out. Nothing screams "hyperbole" than "a middle finger to the customers". Did you expect them to lay out their strategy to the public like "Hey, thanks for investing in us but keep in mind that one day we'll probably join one of the bigger players. You see our product effectively brings together the best email service and the best OS in the world and presents them in a sexy way. So you don't think we will be seeing enormous growth just on the shoulders of that, do ya?"

It's never a good idea to buy a software product (or hardware product) for what it's "going to be." You have to buy or not buy it based on what it is today, because they may or may not go down the path you expect in the future.

What happened with Sparrow was unfortunate, but at the same time it was unlikely that an email client like this was ever going to turn into a great standalone business that would adequately compensate a dev team of that quality. One of the benefits of acquisitions like this is that they also encourage other great developers to try building terrific products and taking risks.

I'd also point out that we don't actually know what's going to happen with the codebase or design, just that this is the end of the road for the standalone email client "Sparrow". Obviously if any of that product is released by Google, it's not going to be called that anymore.

What about buying it for what it "should be"? Sparrow for Mac has some annoying bugs that now will never get fixed.

I agree that sucks, but there's lots of apps out there with bugs that should be fixed and won't ever be, even though their makers weren't bought by anyone. If someone sells you software with bugs that make it unusable, you should get your money back.

The core of my disappointment is the expectation of future development that comes with buying into a relatively new piece of software.

I don't know. This doesn't seem like the most useful stance to take when buying new software. You are almost always going to be disappointed. Nothing lasts for an eternity, whether due to acquisitions, laziness, burnout, etc. I think it's always better going into software purchases with the mindset that you are paying for the current feature set, and anything in addition is just gravy.

How long should they have supported the product with new updates? 6 months, a year, two years, 10 years? Or just until you got sick of it, or found something better?

I completely agree, and I suppose this is also the end to the iPad client they've been hinting around.

Ho, stop!

When you buy a product, you pay for what it is, not fir what it can be.

This whole idea of free features for ever, is not economially viable in the first place.

It only works as long as they can keep getting new customers at a high rate. But at some point, that will slow down. Then they can either build a whole new product, or try charging current customers again.

My point being: you cant pay a fixed one time price for a service, only for a product as is. If you want constant new features, you should constantly be paying for their constant work.

So no. You dont get to complain,

In a free market transactions needn't be limited to simple currency for product exchanges. They can come with whatever strings, of whatever enforcability, the parties place on them.

So here a buyer had an expectation of future development and upgrade, some of them perhaps to be paid for. They invested time and attention learning a new interface and functionality, thinking those upgrades would provide returns on that time invested. Investments like that are how communities are built.

I know squadoosh about the small app market or Sparrow's marketing. But if there are a lot of buyers with expectations like that, then I think you have to speak to those when you are selling or yeah, there is an implicit agreement there. If Sparrow disclosed future plans or roadmaps then the agreement moves toward explicit.

Such obligations aren't enforceable, and what's customary within a market is obviously fuzzy. But that doesn't mean those obligations don't exist or aren't ethical.

Again, I know nothing about this case -- but if there was some understanding that the company would this, that or the other, then it is worth wondering about the ethics of a large company doing an acquisition, to hire people, in the knowledge that the deal breaks some tacit deal with a community.

I agree that some kind of support should continue.

But in the case of an email app, focused on simplicity and ui design; not feature sets for power users, i dont think this expectation can reasonably consist of new features.

On the other hand: the value was in the ui design, not some dificult technological challenge. If there is actually a viable market here, chances are more than one player will follow in their footsteps. UI designs are easy to copy.

And until then, the kind of support one can reasonable expect, will continue: bug fixes.

>> this feels like a big middle finger to the customers who have been supporting them.

During the first bubble, Oracle told one of my customers that they should buy their license for $300K before prices went up. A week after they bought, the price dropped $100K. Now that's getting a big middle finger.

To make this claim about software that costs less than $10 and pays itself off in less than a week? Well that's just being dramatic.

As someone who bought Sparrow on the day it was released - and is in love with it - this feels like a big middle finger to the customers who have been supporting them.

Oh, please. Unless you're sending these devs money on a regular basis then you're not supporting them, and it's completely foolish to think otherwise. Your continued use of their software does not put any food on their table.

You paid money one time for a piece of software and that's exactly what you got. You deserve nothing more.

This attitude that a one-time payment of a few dollars somehow entitles users to a lifetime of free software, free features, and free updates is utterly irrational; as of a few dollars would grant someone license to a lifetime of a developer's work.

I can totally see why Google would want to aquire them. I can totally see why they would want to get aquired by Google.

This is still a very sad day for me as a customer. I love Sparrow, but I don't love Gmail. So seeing developers who created something I love move on to something I don't love is very sad.

Looks like we can kiss getting push notifications on iPhone and the teased iPad version goodbye.

And I just purchased that app yesterday. I'll try and pursue getting a refund from Apple, although I'm not sure how successful I will be in the process. It's aggravating seeing potentially amazing start-up companies get purchased by a large company and then everything they've done seemingly ceases to exist.

Also, how many companies that Google acquires eventually just die off?

This is one of the issues one confronts (at least myself, as a user and startup founder) when purchasing goods and services from other startups:

>... we will provide support and critical updates to our users. However, as we’ll be busy with new projects at Google, we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps.

I was hoping to see Sparrow for Mac further develop, it's my default email client, but it still has plenty of room for improvement. I just hope that "someone" continues where it left off.

Anybody knows if this is an acq-hire, acquisition with intention to further develop Sparrow, acquisition + shutting Sparrow?

What a self serving piece of crap email. I'm happy he and his team are excited. But it's terrible news for their users.

They make it sound like we should be happy and excited about this. Please... I've lost all respect for this guy.

The right thing to do was spin it off to someone else; or make arrangements with Google to continuing development, or open source the whole app. The wrong thing to do was to screw the "user" by leaving us all hanging.

This pisses me off. It's irresponsible to the current customers. I hope other startups don't follow.

Its OK to sell, but they should have pushed Google to maintain an support Sparrow for at least 2 more years.

Alternatively, open-source Sparrow. I don't think it's the source code that Google bought them for.

Would be wonderful if it happened, but Google seems to be a place where good acquisitions go to die.

Really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/23/googles-david-lawee-one-thi...

So really, Google seems to be the place where 1/3 of acquisitions (in which not 100% are "good", per se) go to die.

These are not the success stories of Sparrow, but 3 that I recall that when purchased went dark in some form, to (possibly) re-emerge less than their former selves.

http://etherpad.com/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2008/01/jaiku-users-flee-to-... http://techcrunch.com/2008/02/27/it-took-16-months-but-googl...

Its not to say that this acquisition is not a great thing for the Sparrow team, or that Gmail may someday improve (UI wise), but it is an unfortunate trend for users when a great small / niche product is absorbed and obliterated.

Another viewpoint: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/you-sh...

Key point, "we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps".

This is extremely sad. I use Sparrow all day, every single day.

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