Yesterday, Google acquired Sparrow, the makers of my favorite email client. Here’s what Sparrow had to say about the operation:

sparrowmail:

We’re excited to announce that Sparrow has been acquired by Google! Read more here.

While this message is carefully written, the real PR bullshit comes in the email they’ve sent to their users. I’ve selected the stinging parts of the text:

We’re excited to announce that Sparrow has been acquired by Google!

We will continue to make available our existing products (…) & we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps.

They could as well have said:

We’re excited to announce that Google is gonna pay us shitloads of money to stop developing Sparrow.

Say goodbye to Sparrow for iPad. As of yet, it isn’t an existing product and the text suggests it will never be. Bid farewell to those features we had been promised too (push notifications and so on). Dear Sparrow team, how is it good news for your users when you’re telling them that they’re being left behind? I must have missed the part I should be celebrating.

When you’ve built such a big customer base, shouldn’t you have a little more respect towards your users? They’re the ones that helped you get there in the first place and leaving them behind doesn’t seem to be the most respectful approach.

So yes, thanks a lot. We couldn’t be happier.