In what is entirely a talent acquisition ([they say as much][much]) [Sparrow was purchase by Google][purch].

Marco Arment [has a great post][talent] on talent acquisitions. Without a doubt most products and people are for sale for the right price. Marco event hints that there might be a price at which his team of one is for sale.

> I was only able to reject those offers because Instapaper is a healthy business, and the life that Instapaper provides for me and my family is better than what the big companies offered.

Marco nails it, if the business model you have doesn’t provide the lifestyle you want to live then you’re ripe for sale. His business model supports how much he wants to work and the life his family wants to live so Instapaper and him are not available.

The simple equation here is that the sales of Sparrow did not allow the developers to live the type of life they wanted and the buyout from Google was a better proposition. I don’t have to like it but I can understand the rationale that may have been used.

I’m very disappointed to hear that Sparrow is no more. I do not use the desktop version of Sparrow (just found it too slow) but the iOS app is the best way to deal with email (certainly if you use Google services for email) on iOS. I’ll stick with Sparrow on iOS till it no longer works for me (why stop using something you like when it still does it’s job).

Yes there is some hope that we will in fact see much of the awesomeness of Sparrow get in to Gmail. I’m particularly hopeful that the iOS application from Google will actually become decent to use.

[much]: http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172365/sources-google-sparrow-25-million-gmail-client “Sources: Google’s Sparrow purchase cost under $25 million, will bring beauty to Gmail”
[purch]: http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/ “Sparrow Purchased by Google”
[talent]: http://www.marco.org/2012/07/20/talent-acquisitions “Talent Acquisitions”