Google Acquires Sparrow

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ews broke this morning that Google had acquired Sparrow, a developer of email apps for OSX and iOS. Our first thought had nothing to do with dollar amounts or usership, but more "What the heck is Sparrow, and what does Google want with them?"

Sparrow offers email clients for iOS and Apple devices, which makes it especially interesting that Google partnered up with them; Google's relationship with Apple hasn't exactly been one of rainbows and sunshine all the time—especially when dealing with mobile apps and hardware.

Sparrow currently offers users a way to integrate all of their users' email needs: you can use your Gmail, Hotmail, Google Apps, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, Mobile Me, and other custom accounts all at once. You can also view all of your emails in one unified inbox—a feature that seems a little odd to us, as we typically think of keeping work and personal email accounts separate as being a good thing, or at least easier to keep track of.

Considering Google's mobile relationship with Apple has been touch-and-go at best, the acquisition of Sparrow is an interesting business move.

We're wondering if Google will encourage/push/force the Sparrow team to focus more on Android software, or if they'll allow them to keep working on Apple products.

Especially telling regarding our questions of the partnership is Sparrow's update on the iPhone app: "Sparrow has been acquired by Google. As the team works on new projects, there will be no new features for the Sparrow apps, other than minor maintenance and bug fixes."

In other words, get ready for Sparrow, Android users (or at least we think so).

It's also interesting what Sparrow's CEO wrote in the company's statement announcing the acquisition: "We're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision - one that we think we can better achieve with Google."

They maintain that Sparrow's existing users won't be ignored, but mention again, "We'll be working on new things at Google."

So the real question is this: Why did Google, who already has a huge mail client with Gmail, decide to acquire Sparrow, another email client? Only time will tell, but knowing Google, this was a highly calculated decision.