Google buys app, removes from app store Google has bought the publisher of iPhone mail search app reMail, and promptly pulled the application from the iTunes store until further notice. reMail is an indexing application that downloads copies of all your e-mail for local searching on an iPhone. Or at least it used to be, before Google bought the company. Now reMail …
Seriously they buy a company; big deal companies acquire other businesses all the time...
All companies do this; get off your "Google do no evil" or maybe share your magical wonder drug with the rest of us.
I can think of a lot of things Microsoft have done which are equally evil. Companies do this all the time; it's how they acquire technology and people.
Ever thought Google bought this as they are developing a similar system??
Mike
It's because most companies have an IP clause in the employment contract. It reads something like this: "All your IP are belong to us". I once worked for a medical device company whose contract was so tight I had to ask permission to do simple things like work on open source software or write a kid's book all on my own time. Unfortunately, the process to get permission lasted longer than my interest, oddly enough it also lasted longer than my employment there, which was about another 3 years.
"IT?" because it's as close as I can get to "IP!"
There's only one thing that'll happen here - someone else will write an almost identical app to replace it. Surely all this thing does is store messages locally and then use its own built in search tool - which seems pretty inefficient considering the iPhone already offers Searchlight. I can't imagine this app will be missed by anyone.
I very much doubt thats their primary goal, although they would like that side of the product. (Local search is just a good smoke screen to use for their real goal).
I think what they really want is to make email on iPhone the same as gmail, in that Google then gets to read the emails. This remail looks ideal to pass email data via Google's vast server side spyware on its way to becoming email on iPhones. Then Google will be able to legitimately claim you can use Google search facilities on your emails on the iPhone, because Google has read your emails, which is what they really want.
Whats the betting the relaunch of the product (with much (as usual two faced) trumpeting from Google) will be accompanied by just such a new EULA change, to allow them to monitor the email accounts via their servers. Of course all the trumpeting of the search facilities is yet more Google Doublespeak for what they really want, which is access to ever more of peoples data.
After all Google's primary (doublespeak) goal is to organize the world's data, so now they can sort through and organize peoples iPhone emails. (As for the fact they read what they then sort, well that part will be down played as usual. Don't look at that part, trust us we are Google, look we say (in yet more doublespeak) that we will not do evil, so you can trust us.
Another day and the unstoppable Google Goliath rolls on (over as much of people's privacy as they can get their hands on and get away with). Amazing how much they are being allowed to get away with, which strongly suggests they have very powerful friends in governments. :(
It's hard for me to buy the argument that Gmail is so critical to anyone that they'll put up with behaviour that they find intrusive in order to keep using this particular free mail service. If you don't like the way Google pays for their "free" email service, get an account at Yahoo or one of the hundreds of other webmail services. Or if email is at all important to you, cough up a few quid a year for a real email account with no advertising or other intrusive behaviour.
The analogy to Microsoft is inaccurate and usually disingenuous (unless you're trying to make money from web advertising, perhaps): unlike the Windows and Office business lock-in, there's no coercion nor any reason to use any of Google's services -- other than wanting the shiny new features that they throw out "for free".
"Then Google will be able to legitimately claim you can use Google search facilities on your emails on the iPhone, because Google has read your emails, which is what they really want."
Isn't this an app for gmail accounts? It downloads your mail from gmail so you can search it locally (no idea why you actually want to do that but . . . ) Anyway, if it only works with gmail, don't google get to "read or your emails" already?
Or am I being thick?
Lager, because it is almost beer-o-clock!!!
Stop using the term "doublespeak" until you've actually read 1984. If you have read it, read it again, and again, until you actually understand and use the term correctly. I'm F**king sick of seeing wannabe conspiracy theorists misusing using the word over and over, in completely the wrong way.
Why is it that any story that even remotely references Apple is jumped on by about a million posters that have only one thing to say "I hate Apple". I'll wager the closest most of them have come to an apple is in the local supermarket.
This article was about something Google did FFS!
I think these trolls should be banned from posting until they have something useful or relevant to say.
I hate Microsoft but I don't go around posting that on every story that mentions them, their operating system or their other software! I've got better things to do with my life :)
Hi there AC, you must be new around here. Welcome to this thing we call "the Internet." It has many other names, "the tubes" or "the information superhighway" having been thrown around a lot, but II like to call it "the schoolyard." Why the schoolyard? Because it is filled with little children who love picking on each other...a past time I admit to dabbling in periodically. This "internet" even has a special name for this past time...we call it "trolling."
You asked "Why is it that any story that even remotely references Apple is jumped on by about a million posters that have only one thing to say "I hate Apple"." Well the answer, dear AC is obvious: to illicit reactions exactly like what you posted. Put more plainly; if you don't like the comments, sirrah, DON'T FEED THE TROLLS.
I'm going back under my bridge now.
How do you know that AC's comment wasn't trolling? Perhaps we should ignore what other people post and just comment on the story. Ooops.
I hate Apple. And I have used a Mac. OS Version 9, I think. With a one-buttoned mouse. Repeatedly crashed when using a Nikon negative scanner.
From the horse's mouth: http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/
A real journalist seeks more information about the questions in their articles. If this author had done that, and if they were capable of extended thought instead of making silly guesses, they might have been able to figure out that it's not the very basic "local search capabilities" provided by any indexing service for any local repository, but rather the impressive approach to reworking IMAP and the thoughtfulness of the programmer regarding mail in general that caught Google's eye.
Add to the lazy reporting the ridiculous perpetuation of the "wonka" metaphor, and you've got a profile of a newbie writer who's sucking up to their editor. You ended up with a silly article full of guesses and wise cracks written by someone who knows nothing about their topic. Great job, El Reg. More crack reporting intersected with side-splitting humour. Nice work.
The app is of no interest to Google, and not much interest to iPhone users since iPhone OS got global search last year. So it must be the hire Google wanted, not the app. Once you've hired him, what's the best thing to do with his old job and app? Have him quit and take the app off the market, of course.
Now if Google bought up and killed, say, all the turn by turn navigation apps, we'd have a story.
You did remember to purchase the 32GB iPhone, didn't you? You then have room for all your mail that you signed away to belong to Google, as well as all the music that belongs to someone else that you never paid for, and all the pr0n that doesn't belong in a device you can secretly take to the toilet...
Mines the one with the iPhone in the pocket, ready to go to the toilet.
"Or perhaps Google is just planning to buy up all the iPhone developers, one at a time, until Android is the only game in town."
Finally - the game is afoot! :) I was wondering how they would improve the marketplace to match the appstore... now I know... by destroying the appstore itself... Google clearly thinking outside the box on this one! ;)
Too much power being placed in the hands of too few companies. They own the hardware, what you can do with the hardware, the software and what you can do with the software, they dictate which carriers you can use, how much you pay for it.....
5 years down the line we will all be using propriety hardware running function specific "apps" that are fully licensed and delete from our hardware if we do something inappropriate.
Welcome to the future! Looks worrying like the past that we left behind.
As James Butler says above, this is nothing to do with killing off the app and everything to do with the app developer's ideas and attitude in regard to creating a new kind of IMAP-like email server that uses 2010 technologies.
See Gabor Cselle's own post at
http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2010/02/how-to-replace-imap.html
Paris, cos she likes a bit of HTTP long-polling...
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