First Thunderbird, now Sparrow? We need e-mail clients, please

Sparrow is one pretty e-mail client.

(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)

Today the small e-mail app company Sparrow announced it's getting acquired by Google. I hope this will be good news, but I am not convinced. With Mozilla ceasing development of Thunderbird features, things look bad for users of desktop e-mail software.

I'm a paying user of the Sparrow OS X application. I love it. I find it provides both a simple view to my GMail accounts, and a very fast interface to blast though messages. Google's GMail Web app gives me more features and better searching, and Thunderbird and Postbox are better for bulk operations, but for day-to-day e-mail activities, you really cannot beat Sparrow.

So I was excited when I first heard this news. Since while I love GMail, I despise the Web-based user interface to it. If there's one thing Gmail could really use, it's a strong client app. And hiring the Sparrow developers is a smart move from that perspective. Giving the Sparrow team more resources, exposure to the entire GMail user base, and the keys to t... [Read more]