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

Fate?

[Em Emalb]

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.

Re:Fate?

[ceejayoz]

Otherwise, buying an app like this and not using it is a complete and utter waste of time.

They hired the developer, though, and it's not necessarily a waste of time to deprive a competitor of a good application either.

Re:Fate?

[Em Emalb]

It's the app store, 20 clones will pop up soon enough.

Like I said, it'll be incorporated into some version of gmail down the line. (My guess anyway)

Re:Fate?

[sopssa]

He seems to have some experience on the gmail team at least, he was an intern there when Google started developing it.

Re:Fate?

[MadChicken]

It's not identical, I'm sure, but it's been out for a long time already. It's called DeepFish http://www.webis.net/products_info.php?p_id=deepfish

Re:Fate?

[JWW]

You are correct it is a very Microsoft kind of thing to do. This is definately in the realm of embrace-extend-extinguish.

BTW: Note to Google, embrace-extend-extinguish is evil.

Its looking more and more like its well past time for Google to admit that the "Don't be evil." slogan no longer applies anymore.... If it ever really did.

Re:Fate?

[bill_kress]

Google tends not to play like that. They actively encourage competition and feel it's good for the marketplace.

--I got pegged as a microsoft marketing droid once by an AC, Now I just need my Google, linux and Apple "fanboy" creds...

Re:Fate?

[Chelloveck]

Think I'd have a permanent smile for a few weeks

That's a mighty small value of "permanent".

Re:Fate?

[TheRaven64]

He'd better not visit Australia, or he'd be classified as a pedophile...

Re:Fate?

[Skuld-Chan]

This isn't embrace extend and extinguish though. There aren't very many good examples, but two more recent ones are:

HTML - Microsoft embraced it, then added extensions to it (Active X), and then after bundling it with the most popular OS on the planet it became a widely used standard. So much so that there are still apps out there that only run on IE (SAP client for example).

Java - Microsoft embraced Java (there was a time when IE had Java support built right in!), they added some extensions to it that only IE supported, and then Sun sued them. Still the fallout is that MS vowed to destroy them in the marketplace, and I'd say that Oracles purchase of Sun pretty much confirms they are on the right path still.

See the idea is to make it so that anyone who wants Java, or the Web has to use the most complete client - which is only available from MS. Once MS has you using their stuff - they then encourage people to use ActiveX - once everyone is doing that they then annouce that they are discontinuing support for Java or Javascript. That was the plan at least - the only thing that really shut this process down was Netscape opening up the source for their browser.

IBM was pretty good at this back in the day when they were a monopoly. They tended to do it more with communications protocols, cable plugs, disk formats than with software.

Google's purchase of this app, and removing it from the iPhone is actually more similar to something Apple does more frequently. Shake (while I know its discontinued bear with me) there was a time when it ran on Mac, Windows, Irix etc - after purchasing it they immediately discontinued support for Windows and SGI. What google did is a dick move, but it isn't embrace, extend and extinguish - and I'd defy you to find an example of google doing this.

Re:Fate?

[PopeRatzo]

Rumor has it they are even working on giving humans third eyes

Google's efforts to engineer humans to make them better consumers of their products is not the first.

Apple has already managed to modify their customers to give them limp wrists, and Microsoft modifies their customers by tearing them new assholes.

Re:Fate?

[Draek]

You are correct it is a very Microsoft kind of thing to do. This is definately in the realm of embrace-extend-extinguish.

Wrong. Embrace-Extend-Extinguish is when you Embrace a competitor's product/standard, Extend it in ways incompatible with the original product, and Extinguish it by pushing your own product so hard in the minds of consumers it is you, and not your competitor or the standards body, who determines what's the standard to follow.

What Microsoft tried to do with HTML before Firefox, and Java before the anti-trust lawsuit are E-E-E. Arguably, what Apple, Nokia and Google are trying to do with h.264 and HTML5 is also E-E-E. But simply buying a company that makes a popular product for a competing platform isn't E-E-E, it's just business as usual and examples of such are plentiful in the corporate world.

lulz

[Pojut]

Sounds like a case of Google in a Microsoft's clothing.

Re:lulz

[aztracker1]

More like IBM... as far as phone development goes, it's like Android is the Linux of phone platforms (err, wait).

Re:lulz

[afabbro]

GPLv2: I know my rights; I want my phone call!

The right to a phone call is a TV police show myth. There is no such right. It is custom, but not a right, and by no means universal. In some jurisdictions, you may not make phone calls. You have the right to have someone notified, to the extent that you can summon counsel. If the police merely notify the public defender, they have satisfied every legal obligation.

Re:lulz

[93 Escort Wagon]

How do you know if you request to have "so and so" notified has been completed? Should they not have to provide proof that such a task was completed? Doing so in any other way then letting you have a phone call, or making the call on speaker phone or some other way for you to hear said conversation, just screams potential corruption and abuse to me.

A word of advice - don't get too worked up drawing conclusions based on what someone said on Slashdot.

Totally idiotic conclusions

[MemoryDragon]

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!

Re:Totally idiotic conclusions

[BrokenHalo]

Googles interest is to route as much traffic as possible to their services so that they can earn the ad revenues

That was what immediately occurred to me too. Google isn't being *very* evil, it's just trying to maintain its income base. I don't have (or even particularly want) an iPhone, but given Apple's various ways of pursuing its business model, evilness seems to mean different things to different people.

Just to be clear, I'm not particularly bashing Apple (I'm typing this on a MacBook I inherited from my wife when she upgraded to a more recent model), I'm just saying let's not be hypocrites.

Re:Totally idiotic conclusions

[0xdeadbeef]

That's why they killed POP access, too!

Oh, wait, no they didn't.

Slashdot should be embarrassed for all the FUD they've been posting. Apple is the new Microsoft, except for Apple fanboys, who hold Google as the new Microsoft.

Re:Totally idiotic conclusions

[killmenow]

This is my thought exactly. An app that lets you search through your GMail data without hitting Google's servers every time you search interferes with their core business of providing ads along with search results while monitoring users' searches to improve both search algorithms and ad delivery algorithms. If the app somehow reappears, you can bet even if it works off-line when you have no data connection, the search info will still be tracked and sent back to Google when connectivity is restored. And ads may be added as a "feature" as well.

I'm not saying they're bad or evil and that they're big brother tracking you and "ooh, better wear your tinfoil hats" or anything. Simply saying their business is dependent on maintaining their lead in search technology and ad delivery technology and one of the best ways to do that is to data mine how/what people are searching.

Re:Totally idiotic conclusions

[idontgno]

Well, there may already a hole in that: IMAP. I don't EVER hit Gmail's HTTPS address. Thunderbird accesses the gmail box and does all searches internally.

Of course, if an IMAP MUA uses the IMAP SEARCH command to search mailboxes, then GOOG's IMAP face can treat that input like it would a web-based search form entry, so if that's the case then their search-optimizing input overlord status is secure.

But other than Google's own feature-promotion spam, I see no advertising.

Re:Totally idiotic conclusions

[MoralHazard]

So they simply killed it because it did not bring them any revenues!

But has Google actually killed access methods to G*, in the past, that didn't directly bring it revenue?

  * Exhibit "A": IMAP for Gmail. Despite the lack of advertising revenue during IMAP sessions, Google provides free, quality IMAP service to all Gmail accounts.
  * Exhibit "B": Mobile clients for Gmail: As with IMAP, the mobile Gmail clients (Blackberry, etc.) don't display any advertising to the user during mobile sessions.

In both the IMAP and mobile cases, Google actually spent time and money (engineering hours) building capacities that let people access Gmail with zero advertising. To the untrained idiot, this might see paradoxical: Why would Google spend money on things that don't directly generate revenue?

Of course, if you ponder it for a hot five seconds, the answer is pretty obvious: Good IMAP and mobile options can increase user adoption of Gmail, generally, because the end user finds more to use. This means more people will integrate Gmail more deeply into their lives, and the overall increased Gmail usage could very well drive up absolute web UI page views. The alternatives help get me hooked on Gmail, but in the end I spend more time logging in through the web UI because I'm just using Gmail all that much more. In the end, Google gets more ad views, and revenue increases.

There's a similar concept in retail called the "loss leader": You sell a popular item at below cost, and advertise the hell out of it, just to get people into your store. While they're in your store, they will are likely to buy other, non-sale (profit-making) items, too, since they're already there. Voila! Your revenue increases.

So who do you think you are, calling these suspicions totally idiotic? Google has suddenly broken with its past policies regarding alternative, non-ad-viewing Gmail interfaces. If you've been trusting Google in the past, due to their general friendliness to end users, this apparent change of heart is kind of alienating.

Re:Totally idiotic conclusions

[kjart]

Slashdot should be embarrassed for all the FUD they've been posting. Apple is the new Microsoft, except for Apple fanboys, who hold Google as the new Microsoft.

It never ceases to amaze me when people are surprised when giant corporations behave like giant corporations.

Re:Totally idiotic conclusions

[Crashspeeder]

Slashdot should be embarrassed for all the FUD they've been posting.

Agreed. You can also still search IMAP accounts, the only difference is it's slower than this app since the app itself downloaded copies to the phone while native search searches the server. This has nothing to do with ad revenue.

Re:Totally idiotic conclusions

[l0ungeb0y]

And by that logic, they should be killing off all 3rd party mail client POP and IMAP inbox access for everyone in 3... 2...

Re:Totally idiotic conclusions

[e2d2]

Slashdot should be embarrassed for all the FUD they've been posting

You just summed up the last 10 years.

Google saw a good thing...

[H0p313ss]

... and bought the company.

company founder Gabor Cselle, who will be returning to Google as a Product Manager on the Gmail team

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.

Re:Google saw a good thing...

[tool462]

No kidding. In related news, did you know that Delta bought Northwest Airlines, and now they're killing it off? Seriously. They're removing all the NWA planes, and replacing them with Delta planes. And soon you won't even be able to buy tickets on NWA, you'll have to buy them on Delta. It's more evil than Stalin and Hitler combined!

Google bought the company (one guy and his app). The value for them is in the technology, not the reMail brand. They'll include the parts they like with the gmail service. The guy who created the app got a nice chunk of change from the purchase and a job at a company many would be excited to work for. This is capitalism in it's most basic form. A guy created something of value and was rewarded for it. If this qualifies as evil, you are in the wrong country.

Re:Don't be Evil?

[c]

> So much for _that_ motto... as if they lived by it
> in the first place.

You'll need to explain why playing hardball with Apple counts, in some way, as "evil". The developer got a nice permanent job and a pile of cash, existing users still get to use the app they bought. Potential users are out of luck, but I don't see how Google owes them anything...

c.

I use iGmail for full body searches

[0x537461746943]

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.

Re:I use iGmail for full body searches

[Anonymous Coward]

Full body searches is something that is very important for an email app.

I don't know why you like full body searches so much, but I consider them invasive and uncomfortable. But I guess if you like that sort of thing....

How is this different from Apple?

[je ne sais quoi]

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.

Re:How is this different from Apple?

[delinear]

Maybe because there's a big difference between "killing" and "giving a huge bag of money and a job and the potential to integrate the app into the google codebase", regardless of how the Register/Slashdot try and spin the story title?

Re:How is this different from Apple?

[chrb]

Imagine a small town market place.

Scenario 1: The owner and landlord of the market invites all traders to come and sell goods in his market. However, he also owns a fish store. When a trader selling fish turns up, he refuses to let this trader into the market place. The other traders become worried that, someday, the owner and landlord of the market may stop them from trading on the market, too.

Scenario 2: A trader on the market sells a new type of hot dog. This hot dog is particularly tasty and quickly becomes popular. The owner and landlord of a different market notices this, buys the hot dog trader's business, and relocates it over to his market place.

These two scenarios are not the same. In scenario 1, the owner of the market has a conflict of interest between his landlord activities, and his other business activities. He is imposing a statist solution on the customers to his market, where competitors to his other business interests are refused access to the market. As a result, there is less competition, and customers lose out. In scenario 2, a company bought another company (which is okay), and then chose to sell the products of that company in its own market place. The actions of the market owner in this scenario have not reduced choice or imposed restrictions on the customers or traders of the market place, because the other food vendors are still free to make yummy hot dogs. Free and equal competition has been maintained, which is a good thing for capitalism and freedom (note that this would be different if the market owner were in a monopoly position - in which case, acquiring other companies and restricting their products to one particular market would reduce customer choice, as the customer of a monopolist has no realistic option of buying in an alternative market place).

Re:How is this different from Apple?

[10101001 10101001]

... and the potential to integrate the app into the google codebase

... while killing the application in the interim for no apparent reason.

Even if it's the case that Google eventually integrates the feature into their code base, why shouldn't people have the option to continue to buy and use* the iPhone Search App if they so choose? This is no different, really, than Microsoft pushing people off Windows XP...except at least Microsoft has *some* software as a replacement.

Perhaps I'd be singing a different tune if reMail's features were already being made available through a Google and it was comparable to the reMail App, but we're simply not there yet. Microsoft routinely did the same thing throughout the 90s: buy (or attempt to buy) a product/company that was popular, drop sale of the product ASAP, eventually integrate an inferior version of the product in DOS/Windows (most often focusing more on extending Microsoft's reach than providing a great product), and watching as people who bought the old product eventually switch because it's rather pointless to hold on to a dead product that will never be updated again. If Microsoft (or Google) really cared about their customers, they would have continued development and sale of the product and integrated features based upon what users wanted (this could be determined in large part on the point at which almost all users stop buying the standalone product because the integrated version is good enough**).

*Yes, people can still continue to use the App if they already bought it, but tough luck to everyone who would have bought it who now has to wait and hope that Google eventually builds a replacement that works on their phone.

**Ironically enough, Microsoft seemed perfectly willing to do this with their own products (Windows Plus! and Outlook spring to mind). The simple fact that development teams were required to create a product worth buying above the minimal standard instead of being able to slub along with the knowledge that people didn't really have a choice in which option they'd like (since options were removed) seemed to spur some good competition. In general, if what Microsoft (or Google) offers as the standard is so good, then there shouldn't even be market for the supplemental software (and yes, sometimes people are idiots and this assumption fails), so continued development should have been halted when it no longer was profitable***.

***Obviously, this isn't simply by the standard of Microsoft/Google; for companies like Microsoft or Google, $100,000/year on a product might appear horrible, but it's pretty decent for one self-employed developer. But clearly, cutting off sale of the product right-off makes it impossible to even evaluate profitability.

Ceased "not being evil"

[cpscotti]

It is weird but nowadays is easy to realize that google ceased "not being evil" sometime back there in 2005~2006.
Now they are just the new microsoft or another corporate giant .. buying whatever they can.. It's like a kid with too much money in their pockets:
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.

Profit

[LtGordon]

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

Re:Profit

[IANAAC]

That kind of code would never get you hired.

Anywhere.

Re:Profit

[Anonymous Coward]

He's an Apple II Plus BASIC coder you insensitive clod!

And I'd hire him here at Legacy Old Fart Software!

Re:*Shrug*

[guruevi]

Well, the iPhone already has an IMAP application called 'Mail' and since they added Spotlight search on the iPhone, full-text inbox searches are also/still possible.

Re:Don't be Evil?

[Archangel Michael]

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).

Imperial march

[junglebeast]

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...

Re:Imperial march

[HamburglerJones]

Wow! Thanks -- I never knew the words to the Imperial March until now!

Or...

[asdf7890]

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...

Google is getting scary...

[adosch]

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.

it's for the people

[pydev]

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.

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.

Re:Microgoogle?

[bluefoxlucid]

Yes. Their option was to hire on talent and reward the original creator of something they found interesting; or create their own, integrate it, somehow subtly alter their backend to break the competitor's work, and destroy their competitor's user base (along with any hope of making money).

Effort to protect an illegal monopoly

[mysidia]

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.

Re:Effort to protect an illegal monopoly

[ClosedSource]

All you need to have is a few deep-pocket competitors lobby the government and you will become an illegal monopoly. That's why Ticketmaster isn't an illegal monopoly - no deep-pocket competitors.

Re:Don't be Evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll need to explain why playing hardball with Apple counts, in some way, as "evil".

it's not evil for apple, it's not evil for the developer, but it _is_ evil for any gmail user with iphone/itouch

Too complicated..

[Lysol]

DeepFish is complicated - too many options. Something only a nerd would love. What was nice about reMail was simplicity, like Google itself.

Proprietary...

[Bert64]

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?

GOTO is evil

[Via_Patrino]

GOTO is evil