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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."

2 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Don't be Evil? by furby076 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Google just killed their competition instead of trying to develop something that is better then it. Basically they said "we can't or don't feel like being creative so we will buy something out and shut it down"...it fosters anti-competitive behavior...which is something MS gets slammed for all the time.

    Now on a personal note if I knew how to program I would continuously make apps in the hope that a big company buys me out with tons of money. It's a great way to get rich. Then get hired by the company and make even more money. Nothing is wrong with this model.

    So not evil in the way they treated the developer, but evil that they are preventing innovative competition.

    --

    I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
  2. Re:It's happened before... it'll happen again by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 0, Redundant
    • Write a very good freeware
    • Get bought out by competing proprietary vendor
    • ...?
    • profit
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    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact