reMail announced on Wednesday that it has been purchased by Google and in the same breath announced that its reMail app for the iPhone and iPod touch is no longer available through Apple's App Store.
reMail was a popular app with iPhone users looking for a tool that offered fast email searching, and was considered by many to be superior to Apple's own Mail app. The app was a favorite among Gmail users, too.
Despite the application's popularity, Google and reMail decided to drop it from the App Store.
"You might be wondering what will happen with reMail's product," reMail CEO, Gabor Cselle, said. "Google and reMail have decided to discontinue reMail's iPhone application, and we have removed it from the App Store."
Mr. Cselle will join Google's Gmail team as product manager -- a team he should be familiar with since he was an intern with the group in 2004. Google isn't saying what plans it has -- if any -- for reMail.
7 Comments Leave Your Own
Buy a popular iPhone app and then immediately kill it? I’d like to think Google shut down reMail so it can revamp and then re-release the app with even more features. Part of me, however, is thinking Google killed reMail because it was competition in a form the company didn’t like.
Shades of M$, man. Pfft… “don’t be evil.”
Obvious answer is buy the product, port it, make it Android exclusive.
The Google way is supposed to be Web apps. Buying and killing an iPhone app doesn’t seem to fit in with that strategy doesn’t it?
I agree with the comment from Substance. I am curious about what plans Google may have for this app. So far Google’s software has (mostly?) been created as a companion to their web services. Google Earth using Maps data. Google Chrome for… well, accessing all of their web-based services. SketchUp to create buildings for Google Earth. If they plan to use reMail, one would assume they plan to turn it into some sort of Gmail client. If so, would it be modified so it only works with Gmail? What will they do with this software, if anything?
Is this considered a Monopoly?
Google better reRelease (heh) it, and it better be free :>
reMAil isgoing open source. good to hear.
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