Unblab is now a part of Aol.

Change is coming to Aol Mail and I'm excited to be part of it. I'm happy to announce that Unblab (+ Gtriage) has been acquired by Aol. I'll be joining the Aol Mail team in Palo Alto as a product manager.

Now, I know you're thinking "but Aol Mail is lame!"
And to that, I say "Yes, yes it is." But Phoenix is very un-lame. I'd even say it's very awesome. Really, when you see it, you'll say "Wow, Aol did this?!?"

And then your next question is...

What's happening with Gtriage?

Gtriage is being taken down. You'll see similar email-zen-awesomeness show up in Phoenix within a few months.

What's so great about Aol Mail and/or Project Phoenix?

1. (a). Aol Mail is (currently) #4 behind Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail. That means we're the underdog and we've got room to shake things up!
2. (b). Phoenix is beautiful. The design commitment is really impressive. You have to look at your inbox all day - there's no reason it should be so painful on the eyes.
3. (c). The 'important'/'un-important' model in Gtriage was cool, but it was limited by what you can do with IMAP. Now I've got the whole client...

Does this have something to do with Priority Inbox?

A little bit... but really I'm just following Arrington around. It was Techcrunch50 and one of his posts that got us started, so following him to Aol makes perfect sense. We're soulmates, basically.

What are the details of the Aol Deal?

Unspecified, but if your startup is in a similar situation I'm happy to share.

Who approached who?

I approached them. I think that makes me the pants-wearer in this relationship.

What about the rest of the Unblab team?

When we started talking to Aol back in September everyone else was working on Unblab/Gtriage part-time. So it's just me!

Will Aol buy my startup?

Yes. They've actually got it automated. Here's a screenshot.