Google Grabs Sparrow

By Barbara E. Hernandez

| Friday, Jul 20, 2012 | Updated 11:14 AM PDT

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Sparrow

Sparrow was already working for Android users, so an acquisition makes sense.

Sparrow announced to its users Friday that it was acquired by Google and would transition to Google's terms and policies by Aug. 24.

Sparrow chief executive Dom Leca wrote a short note using the typical cliches given by bought-out tech companies, including "special thanks," "amazing ride" and "excited."

Now we're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google. . . . We’d like to extend a special thanks to all of our users who have supported us, advised us, given us priceless feedback and allowed us to build a better mail application. While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users.

It has been noted that Sparrow has been a Gmail solution for iPhone users for a while now, so it makes sense for Google to buy it and then incorporate it into its own Gmail app. Still no word on how much Google spent, but if we were to hazard a guess, we would say $10 million.