This morning I woke to an email from Sparrow. With great excitement I hoped it was the announcement for the iPad version of Sparrow.

But alas…

Lately I’ve been showered with amazing updates of my favourite Mac and iOS apps– new features and bug fixes –making my experience as an user and customer nothing but a joy.

I have to admit, very few of the apps I’ve paid for am not using anymore, but that’s ok because that was my choice. However, the thought that some day, an app you’ve paid for stops being developed and updated still lingers back of my head – what should I do if I need to migrate the files to another app if they’ve used their own proprietary file extension? Not to mention, I paid for a product which has no future.

This is what I discovered with Sparrow. When it was released it showed us Mac and iOS users how email should be handled and feel on our devices. When it was finally announced their would be an iPad version around the corner I hoped for a universal iOS release, but would happily pay extra for an iPad specific version.

Instead I’ve spent my morning setting up Apple’s Mail.app on all my devices again, removing Sparrow from all my devices and asking Apple for a credit refund.

Why?

I’ve paid for both the Mac and iOS version of Sparrow, not just because I like how it handles my email, but to support future development – like the iPad version which will never come be. But when Sparrow informs its paying customers and users that they’ve been acquired by Google, which has resulted the Sparrow team becoming “busy with new projects at Google” and that they “do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps,” I see no reason to be a loyal customer anymore. Because my status as a customer ended when they decided to say yes to be acquired.

In other words, customers and users, which has paid for Sparrow, are not getting any new feature updates on a product they’ve paid for.

Moreover, Google’s track record regarding acquisitions is not pretty and far from being comparable to their “don’t be evil” motto. Which makes you wonder, when Google will be accused of anti-trust, after acquiring over 100 companies with many of them either being absorbed or just closed. Yet Microsoft and Apple are the ones who are accused of being corporate bullies, etc.

It was fun while it lasted.

And thank you Sparrow, for making customers lose more faith in independent developers.