Software development start-up Sparrow has been acquired by Google, the company’s founder and CEO, Dom Leca, has announced.

“We're excited to announce that Sparrow has been acquired by Google!,” he wrote on the company’s site. “We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience.”

“The Sparrow team has always put their users first by focusing on building a seamlessly simple and intuitive interface for their email client. We look forward to bringing them aboard the Gmail team, where they’ll be working on new projects,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email to the Next Web.

Sparrow’s OS X and iOS email clients have drummed up praise for their unified inbox functionality and design - something Gmail has consistently been criticised for. It also integrates Facebook pretty tightly, importing users’ profile photos directly into email messages.

The acquisition could potentially be a game-changer, given that, until now, Sparrow’s applications have all been Apple-focussed.

“While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users,” Leca wrote.

No word yet on whether that means users who’ve eagerly been waiting for a dedicated Sparrow app for iPad to materialise should expect disappointment. In June, the company promised "something bigger", but it’s unlikely anyone guessed that meant Google acquisition.