Google buys iPhone app Remail; kills it!

BANGALORE, INDIA: Google purchasing a start-up is no longer a news, as acquisition has become a part and parcel of many IT giants nowadays. However, this particular acquisition arouses curiosity for a different reason. Because Remail, the start up it purchased on Wednesday, is the one which developed an e-mail search application for the iPhone.

And the first thing Google did after the takeover was to cut Remail's ties with Apple's App Store.

Remail founder Gabor Cselle, who had earlier worked with Google, himself made the announcement in his personal blog.

“Google and reMail have decided to discontinue reMail's iPhone application, and we have removed it from the App Store,” he said.

“Remail is an application on your phone. If you already have Remail, it will continue to work. We'll even provide support for you until the end of March, and we've enabled all paid reMail features for you: You can activate these by clicking "Restore Purchases" inside the app,” the blog post added.

Gabor also announced his decision to rejoin Google.

“Gmail is where my obsession with email started as an engineering intern back in 2004, and I'm thrilled to be coming back to a place with so many familiar faces. Remail's goal was to re-imagine mobile email, and I'm proud we have built a product that so many users find useful,” he added.

According to a CNET report Google is also getting close to the acquisition of On2, a developer of video compression technology. Though acquisition plan was announced in August 2009, it did not take place at that time and later Google increased the value of On2 from $106.5 million to $133.9 million.