Slashdot Mirror
Google Buys iPhone Search App, Kills It
Hugh Pickens writes "PC World reports that Google has acquired a popular iPhone application called reMail that provides 'lightning fast' full-text search of your Gmail and IMAP e-mail accounts. The app downloads copies of all your e-mail which can then be searched with various Boolean options. reMail has only been in the application store for about six months — with a free version limited to one Gmail account and a premium version which can connect to multiple accounts. 'Google and reMail have decided to discontinue reMail's iPhone application, and we have removed it from the App Store,' writes company founder Gabor Cselle, who will be returning to Google as a Product Manager on the Gmail team. Google isn't saying what the fate of reMail might be. Some are suggesting reMail could be integrated into Gmail search or live on in some form as a part of Android, Google's mobile platform. Another possibility is that Google may have snapped up reMail just to kill it, not because reMail was a competitor to anything Google had, but because reMail made the iPhone better or the acquisition may have more to do with keeping good search technology away from the competition, as opposed to an attempt to undercut the iPhone. 'Perhaps Google is just planning to buy up all the iPhone developers, one at a time, until Android is the only game in town,' writes Bill Ray at the Register."
It'll be "re-incorporated" into some distant version of gmail.
Otherwise, buying an app like this and not using it is a complete and utter waste of time.
Sent from your iPad.
Sounds like a case of Google in a Microsoft's clothing.
Living With a Nerd
So much for _that_ motto... as if they lived by it in the first place.
A clever person solves a problem, A wise person avoids it. -Einstein
Googles interest is to route as much traffic as possible to their services so that they can earn the ad revenues, now this application basically performed inbox searches without redirecting the user to gmail (where google would get the money from the ad revenues)
So they simply killed it because it did not bring them any revenues!
... and bought the company.
It is perfectly normal to pull the product temporarily to re-brand and redirect during an acquisition that is technically interesting but does not completely meet the company vision. Nothing to see here, move along.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
They do it because they CAN. Full-stop. Either we get together and do something about it, or we shut up and let them do it.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
I mean, aren't there other email options available to iPhone users (I'm honestly asking - I don't use an iPhone). And if there are other options, it's not like the GMail app offered much other than a better search - on the phone. Surely, someone will offer decent search for any iPhone email out there at some point, no?
This has been said many times before: if you don't like a businesses practices, don't use them. Something else will ALWAYS spring up to meet demand.
by something HTTP-based written with "Gwit", AJAX and lots of text based ads.
also anyone who actually calls it "gwit" needs to be shot.
I downloaded the free iGmail specifically for the searching features. I use the regular iPhone mail app to read mail but it can not search in the body portion of the emails. If I need to do a search (For instance to see what I have bought through iTunes) I launch iGmail and us it's search feature. Apple really needs to think more seriously about their feature set. Full body searches is something that is very important for an email app.
I think now would be a great time to produce an app that does "lightning-fast" searches of GMail inboxes... That would be (not very) quick way of finding out whether Google bought reMail to integrate it, or to kill it.
Hey, maybe I found the missing step 2:
1. Build email searching app
2. *** GET BOUGHT BY GOOGLE *** (darn, we have to buy ANOTHER one of these?)
3. Profit!
www.clarke.ca
As I recall, there were quite a few commenters here that thought Apple was being a schmuck for killing google's phone app even though google's app replaced apple's phone app instead of installing itself side-by-side. Here, you've got google killing their competitors that are trying to mooch off their mail service. Sounds like pretty similar behavior to me on both apple and google's part since they are trying to stamp out a competitor who is getting a "free lunch" off their products.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Man that sounds a lot like the kind of stuff people hate Microsoft for. Instead of making a better product, buy the competition and kill it. Couldn't Google have made their own iPhone app that did lightning fast searches of gmail?
It is weird but nowadays is easy to realize that google ceased "not being evil" sometime back there in 2005~2006. .. buying whatever they can.. It's like a kid with too much money in their pockets:
Now they are just the new microsoft or another corporate giant
they almost stop coding.... they just buy!
Remember google wave? blehg... google buzz? bleh...
Even Google Chrome is not what people imagined it would be..
Next big thing google will do (if they finally manage to pay enough) is buying facebook or twitter.
10 START COMPANY
20 COMPETE WITH GOOGLE
30 GET BOUGHT BY GOOGLE
40 GOTO 10
Is the headline misleading?
Has Google ever once just bought a competing product to shut it down?
I suspect they will roll this into Gmail service, the the free Google iPhone app.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
"possibility is that Google may have snapped up reMail just to kill it"
I have no facts but I must opinionate...
Another possibility is that Google may have snapped up reMail just to kill it, not because reMail was a competitor to anything Google had, but because reMail made the iPhone better
That's just silly. Nobody is going to say "I was going to buy an iPhone, but now it doesn't have reMail so I think I'll go with a Nexus One instead," and Google knows this.
I get my free full body searches at the airport; just mumble something about "AlQaeda" and "Death to America".
Dear Google,
I'm planning on becoming a successful iPhone developer.
You can send me a check now, thank you.
I don't know how much coding Google still does or doesn't do these days, but...
Shareholders want to see short term profits, and buying other companies is the way to achieve that. And you'll see this very same behavior from every publicly traded company that has cash available for other purchases.
DUM dum DUM dum DA-DUM dum DA-DUM!
DIM dim DIM dim DI-DUM dum DA-Daaaam!
Him hum ha-him hum, ha-hum-ha hum --
ha-him hum, ha-hum-ha hum...
And so began the Imperial March of Google...
They have effectively employed a Developer (or more than one if the company wasn't a one man band) for work on their mail related projects taking his existing work on a (popular?) mail related application as part of his CV. They were perhaps on the lookout for a developer with good experience in both mail protocols and UIs for mobile devices (I can see that skillset fitting in to their plans as I understand them). Said developer/company does not have time to maintain/support the iPhone app long term on top of new responsabilities in the new position with Google so decided to stop, and Google has not particular interest in keeping it going by passing it to another team either because the market for it is too small for them to care or it just isn't the direction they want to send a dev team in at the moment.
There doesn't need to be any anti-Apple consideration here at all. Apple users need not worry: if there is a good market for such an application someone will step up to the bat and create one. In fact I predict many will turn up soon as people try follow in this fellow's footsteps - you just need to hope one of the new projects will be both good and long lived...
This is well into the big double-digit count of Google headlining or top subject matter in slashdot news stories in the last 5 days, with ranging topics from broadband internet backbone building to social network privacy with Buzz to energy buy-ins, now iPhone app buy-up monopolization. Unstoppable force, friends.
I know Google has done extremely well diversifying themselves and has their fingers in anything, but no one treats them like monopolizers that Microsoft became.
Hopefully reMail turned a good profit on this... and wasn't squeezed by the big corporation.
Companies like Google buy small companies mainly for the people. Think of it as a big hiring bonus.
I suspect other than that, reMail simply didn't figure in any of their business plans.
DVD Shrink was arguably the best DVD copying software (freeware) out there until the developer was hired by Nero, one of the leading companies that made competing DVD copying software. Since their software was doing the same thing (albeit, for a price), there wasn't any technical information that could have been garnered by hiring the guy. The developer just stopped development on the software immediately, and hasn't updated it since.
There's no reason to think that Google isn't doing the same thing.
I don't respond to AC's.
Actually, this is a good case for why a developer would FOSS an application in the first place. Of course, if you're in "Please Google buy me out and make me rich beyond avarice" mode, then you wouldn't.
How about creating a semi FOSS license that remains closed source, and immediately becomes FOSS or Public Domain should the company ever fold, or the software itself becomes otherwise unavailable.
Kind of a poison pill of everlasting life. It would prevent applications from ever disappearing except by natural death (nobody wants it any longer).
It takes two to tango; there is no doubt that the project author made the conscious decision to join Google knowing that he would forfeit control of the project. Google probably even said point blank "we want to put your expertise to work *for Google*" with the implication that otherwise, he was only really benefiting Apple.
Who here really thought Google would buy an iStore App company (the developer) with the intention of profiting from the App's sales? Anyone? Buying it to 'absorb' the IP (i.e. kill it) was the only real outcome.
Googleis Worsedan Microsoft, interesting name for a child.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
This is all sideline commentary. It's like watching poker on TV and thinking/assuming you understand what's going on in their minds:
Slashdot-bot response #1: "Sounds like a case of Google in a Microsoft's clothing."
Who says they haven't been already? You get big enough and it's growth by acquisition -- though you could argue that Google bucks the trend. That it intends to grow organically while acquiring. Anyway, it's all a big wankfest unless you're an investor, or run a business affected by it. If you're a corporate drone, it's just sideline talk -- get the fuck back to work (talking to myself too :)).
Slashdot-bot response #2: "So much for _that_ motto... as if they lived by it in the first place."
I say people read into it way too much. I mean, it's notable that no other company would share the same motto but don't look at it as official legislation. "Don't be evil" has a history and has morphed into more that what it was -- which I say was just a small group that came up with an interesting corporate core value.
Slashdot-bot response #3:
"So they simply killed it because it did not bring them any revenues!"
No - how do you know that? This just freaking happened a few days ago. You somehow have seen/read/understood the paperwork of the deal? Will it come back in some other form? Was it just to get the programmer?
reMail provided a capability similar to Gmail's search that worked with IMAP accounts and mail providers other than Gmail
Since part of Gmail's competitive edge is good search technology, reMail was a substantial competitive threat.
Now by buying and killing them, their search capability is no longer available on the mobile platform. iPhone users will have to use gmail and Google's built-in search instead of a third-party IMAP provider in order to get a decent search experience.
Killing this competitor protects Google's monopoly on search, and on e-mail search in particular.
Does reMail have say some sort of patent.
No doubt this is for the future.
I say it is either to:
A) Develop their own "App" to access Gmail over Android (or whatever Google phones are called then) and they want to use a technology or expertise developed by reMail
or
B) reMail has a patent, or Google will file for a patent using reMail technology, that will enable them to boot/restrict/make pay licence fees to Google any phone company that wishes to access Gmail.
Is their problem that it's someone other than Apple who's capriciously killing apps from the App store? Boo hoo, I am Jack's crocodile tears. Apple hasn't exactly bent over backwards to accomodate iTunes on competing phones either after all, what's one mail app?
The Google EZ-Plan to Do No Evil.
1. Eliminate Evil Competition
2. Soak up customers
3. Be really nice to customers.
4. Keep being nice to customers.
5. After being well established as a monopoly, keep being nice to customers.
6. Rule world as benevolent ultraconglomerate.
7. Wait until after complete world domination to turn evil.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
This is a common mistake ... Google's slogan isn't actually "Don't Be Evil"; it's actually "Don't Be Apple."
Video of Alex is available at the Alex website.
What? No Score:5, Funny comment as yet? You people are lame.
Sounds like a case of Google in a Microsoft's clothing.
Even M$ in its heyday couldn't buy up every App Store gold rusher. But targeting a tactical weak-point, like email, that's something possible. I recall some quip about M$ disrupting the supply of 3.5" floppies to spoil the OS/2 launch.
When search is performed on the phone, google can't see what is searched for and either track it or monetize additional results.
They will probably start trying to find good apps as they are being developed and tested. That way they can acquire them before they make it to the app store. Not that I would sell out on the app I am developing. Not even for a big chunk of cash and a good job at Google. No way. (Call me...)
so when do we get eric schmidt borg icons for google stories?
DeepFish is complicated - too many options. Something only a nerd would love. What was nice about reMail was simplicity, like Google itself.
Perhaps Google is just planning to buy up all the iPhone developers, one at a time, until Android is the only game in town,
Woohoo, finally!!! "I'M SPARTACUS!!"
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Gmail already does lightning-fast full-text searches of your e-mail.
And it can download IMAP mail and import it into your Gmail account.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Why bother with the embrace, extend part - costs time and money; go straight to extinguish and save money in the longer term.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
The only reason we know about "Don't be evil" is because Google told us. Thus it's just marketing plain and simple.
Sounds like the same strategy some other big computer company would do and get flamed for it. As far as I am concerned as long as they are going to make an equal or better product I couldn't care less, but still Google is exerting it's influence, money and power to control the intarweb.
And with that, the troll/flame mods can post their displeasure for my anti-Google statement.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Couldn't Google just buy out Apple and kill it?
This is why many people don't like closed source proprietary software...
The original vendor of this software has stopped developing or distributing it, this would be bad enough and effectively turn existing versions into abandonware... But given Apple's distribution model, this software is now effectively completely defunct. What happens to all the people who paid for the non free version?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
and observe Google turning into Microsoft
what really was the value in the application when gmail already has search built into it? When I first read the headline, I was asking myself why would you want to copy all your gmail email onto the iphone just so you can search it on the phone as opposed to searching online. Is it because of all the holes in AT&T's coverage map and so offline searching and reading is a major feature?
What seems to make sense of all this is that Google has plans for ChromeOS, Gmail, and probably Android for local storage and search of gmail, docs, etc so killing this before it gets much traction makes sense. And since it was just an add-on for a service Google already runs, it's not anything like what Microsoft does and has done. Nothing like them purchasing Coopers and Peters to shutdown its Java products. Nothing like them purchasing DimensionX to shutdown the tools to build Netscape based products. Nothing like them purchasing the antivirus email server vendor and shutting down the Linux support, etc, etc, etc.
so really, how is it the same?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Google is evil! let's start using bing!
Hey Google, If you're in the market for a charades game app, my game 'PartyWord' is always open for bids or how about you go crazy and purchase the rights to my interactive fiction book 'Beer, Women and Bad Decisions' - I swear I'll give ya a reasonable price!!
The "do no evil" is how about Google deal with its users, not with the competition, in this case IPhone from Apple.
Apple has always been a cutthroat company under Steve Jobs. Be it competitors, customers, or even themselves (Apple Computer vs Mac). Bill Gates credits Steve Jobs for teaching him how to run a company in his book.
So it isn't Apple is the new Microsoft, it is just Apple up to their normal evil ways. Some people have just put them on so high a pedestal that they keep missing the knifes in their back weather they are slowly worked in there or are being stabbed really quickly.
That being said, Microsoft is still evil.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
GOTO is evil
Near as I can tell, one of the differences is that the app supports searching the body section of emails...something which you can't do with the iPhone's standard email app. I could be wrong, but that's what I've gathered from the article & posters on this story.
Living With a Nerd
Google should buy out Zynga? They would infiltrate Facebook and can datamine to their hearts content. Just imagein this Google ad brought to you by Farmville & Mafia Wars.
Why's this news? Loads of people have acquired it.
After all, it's only $2.99.
And what of the people that had already paid for reMail? They won't be getting any updates or support for their product. Sucks to be them I guess, but hey as long as we can rationalize that "Do No Evil" thing by adding a parenthetical 'To Anyone We Care About,' it's all good.
Hardball with Apple, lol. As if Microsoft was doing anything other than 'playing hardball' back in the old days when they were Slashdot's favorite bogeyman.
This looks just like regular evil to me.
for (i=0,i<p,i++){
found(googleCompetitor[i]);
googlePurchases(googleCompetitor[i]);
}