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."

Comments

Profit

[LtGordon]

10 START COMPANY
20 COMPETE WITH GOOGLE
30 GET BOUGHT BY GOOGLE
40 GOTO 10

It's happened before... it'll happen again

[DogDude]

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.