Sparrow was an

email client An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email. A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...

for OS X and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

. After a 4-month beta period, Sparrow went on sale in the

Mac App Store The App Store (also known as the Mac App Store) is a digital distribution platform for macOS apps, often referred to as Mac apps, created and maintained by Apple Inc. The platform was announced on October 20, 2010, at Apple's "Back to the Mac ...

on February 9, 2011 and became the top paid and top grossing app in less than one day. On July 20, 2012, the company announced that it had been acquired by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

and was ceasing continued development of the application except for critical bug fixes.

Versions

Desktop

Sparrow uses a simplified

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

reminiscent of

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

clients such as

Tweetie Tweetie was a client for the social networking website Twitter. There is a mobile version that runs on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, and a desktop version runs on Mac OS X Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion (respectively 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7). Both t ...

apps, as opposed to a more traditional email style such as Apple's

Mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal sys ...

Mozilla Thunderbird Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation and operated by subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. The projec ...

. Sparrow currently works with

Gmail Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP and ...

and

Google Apps Google Workspace (formerly known as Google Apps and later G Suite) is a collection of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google. It consists of Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Meet ...

accounts, along with other

IMAP In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by . IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...

email accounts. It also includes features such as

drag-and-drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...

attachments,

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2007 ...

or Box.net support for uploading attachments, Growl support, Gmail labels and keyboard shortcuts, as well as quick replies, threaded replies and easy switching between accounts.

iPhone version

In March 2012, Sparrow for iOS was released in the

App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the c ...

Acquisition by Google

On July 20, 2012, Sparrow and Google jointly announced that Sparrow had been purchased by Google and the company's employees would be added to their Gmail team. Due to this, they also announced that development of both of Sparrow's apps would be ended except for critical bug fixes. The purchase and subsequent discontinuation prompted criticism from some tech sites, who were uncertain about the future of the apps. Sean Gallagher of Ars Technica wrote he was concerned for the app's future given Google's previous history of buying out and subsequently abandoning development on other startups such as reMail,

Meebo Meebo (often stylized as meebo) was an instant messaging and social networking service provider. It was founded in September 2005 by Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg, and Elaine Wherry, and was based in Mountain View, California. Initially the company o ...

and

Quickoffice Quickoffice is a discontinued freeware proprietary productivity suite for mobile devices which allows viewing, creating and editing documents, presentations and spreadsheets. It consists of ''Quickword'' (a word processor), ''Quicksheet'' (a spre ...

. Rafe Needleman of CNET wrote that the purchase combined with the ceasing development of

meant there was a growing lack of quality desktop mail clients. Rob Beschizza of

Boing Boing ''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twic ...

created a satirical video instructing users to prepare for the acquisition by deleting the app from their computer. However,

TIME Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

noted that the acquisition may lead to better apps for Gmail. Adrian Covert of Gizmodo expressed excitement about a possible official desktop client for Gmail.

Related development

In 2014, Google released

Inbox by Gmail Inbox by Gmail was an email service developed by Google. Announced in limited invitation-only basis on October 22, 2014, it was officially released to the public on May 28, 2015. Inbox was shut down by Google on April 2, 2019. Available on the ...

, an email app with functionality similar to Sparrow. Inbox was shut down by Google on April 2, 2019.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sparrow (E-Mail Client) MacOS email clients MacOS-only software Google acquisitions Discontinued Google acquisitions Discontinued software