After the departure of Marissa Mayer, one of the best employees of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), the company immediately began to scout for new talents. The search engine giant acquired Sparrow, developer of Mac and iOS e-mail clients, to bring its five talented engineer,s to join the Gmail team.
According to reports, Google paid around $25 million for Sparrow. Technology analysts believe that the people behind the start-up company will be a great asset for the search engine giant to improve its gmail, and to create new products and services beneficial to users. For instance, Hoa Dinh Viet, Sparrow’s co-founder and CTO, previously worked for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), iCal, iSync, and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)?.
In a statement, Dominique Leca, CEO of the company, said, “We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience. Now we’re joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision—one that we think we can better achieve with Google.”
Leca also thanked Sparrow’s investors, and the users who supported the company’s products. According to him, its existing products will remain available to users, along with support and critical updates, but they will no longer release new features for the apps. He also emphasized that its team will be busy developing new projects with Google.
The Sparrow app is worth $9.99, and it enables iPhone and MAC users to access their e-mail accounts using multiple services. However, the app is not compatible with smartphones powered by the Android operating system.
On the other hand, a spokesperson for Google confirmed the company’s acquisition of the Paris-based start-up company. The spokesperson said, “The Sparrow team has always put their users first, by focusing on building a seamlessly simple and intuitive interface for their email client. We look forward to bringing them aboard the Gmail team, where they’ll be working on new projects.” No additional details were provided regarding the transaction.
Obviously, the search engine giant wants to enhance the capability of gmail to become more competitive, and encourage more users to switch to use smartphones with its Android operating system.
Technology analysts also observed that Larry Page is concentrating more on the appearance, design, and user interface of Google products.
Last month, Google also acquired Meebo, a social advertising service provider, for $100 million, and its employees joined the Google+ social networking team.
