[1] On July 20, 2012, the company announced that it had been acquired by Google and was ceasing continued development of the application except for critical bug fixes.

Sparrow uses a simplified user interface reminiscent of Twitter clients such as Tweetie,[2][3] as opposed to a more traditional email style such as Apple's Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird.

[7][8][9] The purchase and subsequent discontinuation prompted criticism from some tech sites, who were uncertain about the future of the apps.

Sean Gallagher of Ars Technica wrote he was concerned for the app's future given Google's previous history of buying out and subsequently abandoning development on other startups such as reMail, Meebo and Quickoffice.

[10] Rafe Needleman of CNET wrote that the purchase combined with the ceasing development of Mozilla Thunderbird meant there was a growing lack of quality desktop mail clients.