Bangalore: In a mission to strengthen its Gmail on other platforms, Google had acquired Sparrow, a French startup behind email applications for Apple’s iOS platform.

Financial terms of the deal or the motive behind the acquisition was not revealed. Since Google already has a native Gmail app for Apples devices, the acquisition is likely to strengthen the existing one by offering more features as a way to compete more effectively with Apple Mail, which is available on both iOS and OS X.

On its iTunes listing, Sparrow had already announced that there won’t be any further updates to its email client apart from maintenance and bug fixing. Dominique Leca, co-founder and chief executive of Sparrow wrote an email to the existing clients mentioning the same.

“We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience,” Leca said in a brief note on the company’s website. “Now we’re joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision – one that we think we can better achieve with Google.”

Google had released a statement which said, “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.”

The acquisition can be regarded as Google’s strategy for strengthening its products in its biggest enemy’s platform.