Google Rips Down HuddleChat

I just started using HuddleChat and I really enjoyed it. Shame Google is taking it down

~Daniel Brusilovsky
http://www.danielbru.com

Censorship not so much, these guys created something that was under the google name, albeit not “official”, it was potrayed as close to it. I think calling it censorship is going a bit too far, IMO they did the right thing here.

Mike Scott - Google made the disclaimer that they were “not affiliated” with HuddleChat. Sure seems like they were affiliated to me.

The right call was to leave it up. Or lean on the developers to take it down themselves. They didn’t think through their own legal BS in the rush to please Jason Fried.

Googe bye HuddleChat!

oh boo hoo, they copied the campfire, boo hoo, campfire is so unique and famous, boo hoo, they copied, i’m telling my mom

I don’t agree that it was censorship. It merely seems that Google was protecting it’s self from a potential prior art copyright case with 37Signals.

In a case like this where your own employees use your tools, even in their spare time, to develop an application that is a copy (deliberate or not) of another application the lines blur between who is libel. You the developer or your employer. 37Signals could make a case for prior art and go after Google not the individual developers and since Google app engine was involved an argument could be made that Google “made available” the product. They did the right thing, recognized the error and corrected it.

Christopher - “prior art copyright case”

People can’t copyright a software idea, just the actual code. And prior art generally refers to patent law, not copyright law. and I’m pretty sure 37Signals hasn’t even tried to patent Campfire, because it’s not patentable. You even got the word “libel” in there, which is a false and malicious printed statement. Not sure where you’re going with that.

Admit it, you just put together a bunch of legal sounding words and hit “post,” didn’t you?

Well that settles that… the eeesny fiber of my inner being that kinda sorta wanted to try out AppEngine is dead… I can’t believe this… I cant help but blame a lot of the bloggers who ran with the “Google rips off 37 Signals” headlines…. (tsk tsk tsk RWW… hehehe)…

Time to undo the damage and start a campaign to bring back Huddle!!! Taking it down is going to kill a lot of developers plans of deploying applications on that platform… nobody who cares about their app will hook it into something that Google can just rip down because a few noisy bitches complain about something… that’s just really crappy form from a co. like GOOG. I’m really disappointed.

Oops…that is not good for Google.

http://www.meetingflex.com/index.html
Web Meeting + Chat + User Management

This is freaking stupid. I can’t believe the 37signals guys are whining over this.

The one trick ponies at 37s are getting out of hand. Oh well…

A shame they took it down. It was a nice little app and I was planning on using it.

I personally like using 1 sign-in for as many things as possible, something like this attached to my google accounts is nice. I hope to see an improved version that is perhaps slightly different that Campfire so appease the masses. I personally don’t care and see them as 2 similar programs written in different programing languages. Since when does 37 Signals own the rights to group chat with simple interfaces? I thought HuddleChat looked similar to other Google Products, even though they had no direct affiliation.

Christopher - “prior art copyright case”?

Are you kidding? Really?

Meh. Jason threw his toys. Google acted nicely and bought it down. I wouldnt have thought a demo app by 3 engineers should be of commercial concern to the might of the signals!

I love the app engine though. I haven’t used python much before, but got my app maplinks up and going in around 3 hours.

If it’s censorship, then the culprit is Google, not Jason Fried. And besides, let’s not forget that the genesis of the whole affair was that a shameless ripoff occurred.

Your argument is is that the ripoff wasn’t an “official” act by Google, but an independent act by their employees, developed on Google’s dime, using Google’s computing resources? That seems like a tenuous argument, at best.

Prior art does apply in Copyright someone needs to brush up on his copyright law. As for tossing in a bunch of “legal” sounding words and hitting post, you could not be further from the truth. But I won’t fight a flame war with you, let’s agree to disagree on each others opinions.

The few of us who tried it were probably all very satisfied by this “sample”. I personally planned to use for all my class project (I’m in exchange in Canada, my school is in France, and I will be in London next year for a dual degree… so I need such a platform, and the use of Google account is perfect to get all my team-mates in a chatroom within 1 hour).

Where can I sign a petition to bring back HuddleChat?

Danny - err, yeah. google was the censor, not jason. jason was just being childish.

yeah, everyone knows 37signals invented group chat.

google copied it feature for feature, too. they were like:

[x] ability to read messages from other people
[x] ability to send messages to other people
[x] use large rectangles for layout
[x] show what room you are in

oh shit come to think of it my irc client copied 37signals too! i’m disappointed in it, too, jason. it really stooped to a low level to implement *obvious shit for group chat*

here’s a tissue.

Christopher - sure, but not really. but, please, elaborate. explain your prior art copyright and libel case.

and Christopher Mercer goes down in flames….. ouch.

Out of all of this, the one thing that seems like to be a constant is the fact that another quality application that actually compared in usability and feature-set to a 37Signals product once again suddenly drops off of the face of the earth…

Jason Fried got all emo and now I have to go back to an ad-supported, limited feature campfire - does no one else see it this way? If he really had a case he wouldn’t be blogging about it, he would be talking with a lawyer.

I hate the word censorship unless its an arm of federal or state govt stifling a citizen.

This is just Google doing a CYA

This is fascinating, it’s like what happens when an immovable object meets an irresistible force… either the company that “does no evil” did evil or the company that builds “real” products built a pretty shallow product that got pwned by a “hello world” sample app.

Admit it, you just put together a bunch of legal sounding words and hit “post,” didn’t you?

That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all day. Go former lawyer go!

That is quite unfortunate. It was a good little product.

“the real thing ” here is the precedent laid, not copying, not taking out, not ripping.

it gives an image,” Google censors “…

and image is everything when launching a new product and service..

and i feel thats what Michael (original post) is trying to get into.( i think).

being a developer, i would be more hesitant (don’t know why) to try building apps if i feel (prolly unrealistically) google “big brother” might censor my product at any moment..

Its the thought that kills..

The “Hello World” app looks exactly like my intellectual property. Take it down!

Wow. Although they have pulled the app, I would *love* to see how they transform an app from RoR + RDBMS backend to Python/Django to BigTable/GFS backend.

Nothing wrong. Google is trying to be on the safer side and avoid any legal hassles. In this case Google owns both the platform and the application. Google is pulling down HuddleChat in its capacity as application developer, not platform owner. This by itself can not be costrued as censorship. We have to watch what Google will do when some one else host an controversial application using their app engine.

I dont think its the concept of group chat, but its going a little overboard to copy campfire feature for feature dont you think?

I mean, it would be fairly easy for someone to write the crunchbase app on google’s stack. If they copied your design etc. and any innovations you may have done, dont you think thats ethically an issue?

I didn’t realize 37Signals copyrighted a chatroom. Maybe they need to send a C&D letter to Meebo, too?

Arrington - just to clear the air, i believe Christopher misspelled “liable.” It never makes sense to say, as he did, “…the lines blur between who is libel.”

So what if Huddle is a carbon copy? the guys at 37signals need to rethink their mission statement. You can’t build a great product then sit on your balls and hope for the cash to flow in indefinitely.

(joined the group :P)

scott - ah, you’re right. I’ll stop harping on that then.

Jason Fried and his less is more mantra is starting to really get old. He may be able to convince his girlfriend of this, but I do not want to hear it anymore.

Ah, 35 comments in and the first dick joke. Good one.

Jason - did you join the group?

InCircles was doing this two years ago.

You know, for all the complaining you guys are doing, you could have probably written another clone of the app yourselves. Make it a TechCrunch group project.

Bob - yes, but would google take it down?

Longtime reader, first time poster.

Agree on the censorship. Two separate issues bug me.

One: Goog needs to learn from this. Specifically can they both be the 800# big company gorilla and still inspire hot s*** devs to build cool apps fast, without the big company keystone cops routine? I worked at a bigswco in PacNw for 10 years, and I saw this devlolve. Goog’s got to nail this.

Two: Terrible PR appraoch for 37sigs, good learning opp for others. Many & growing # of start-ups will have challenge of avoiding the potential of being ripped off or copied. Staying focused on how to deal will be key. This statement is over-the-top and does nothing for customers or the 37sigs community.

My $.02.

I agree 100% with Michael on this one. Jason, what do you have to say about this? A lot of developers are wondering why you are acting like this…

Google should be commended. They do not need to own all markets. Leave group chat to 37Signals. 37Signals spent all that time developing Campfire and all. Good going Google.

Oh how the blogging world can ruin a good thing. I read a few of these blogs regarding HuddleChat and they grilled google saying they robbed the idea and they were a big company squeezing out smaller ones. And now google pulls the plug and they are whining that it should go back up. Which way is it up or down? The things bloggers will do to post a pessimistic story; the glass is always half empty.

My take on this whole thing is google probably asked a few developers to put something together using the app engine. These guys were using 37signals to collaborate on an idea and though wow this tool is great lets use it as a demonstration for the app engine. It debuts the blogging world goes into a frenzy to catch the app engine’s marketing wave and kills the site. Now that its gone everyone realizes we just got a free clone for an overpriced product and want it back. boo freaking hoo.

Copycatting is certainly not the way to go.. or it won’t go too far anyway…

My understanding of the situation is the reason why 37 Signals is upset is because HuddleChat essentially ripped Campfire’s design (down to some of the effects) and was, feature for feature, exactly identical to Campfire. About the only difference between the two products were the colors chosen for each site.

Seems to me that such blatant copying is cause for some concern, especially when it is the 1200 pound gorilla doing the copying.

It would be one thing if HuddleChat had additional features which Campfire does not currently have, which made it easy to differentiate between the two products. But when the colors and name are the only things separating the two products there is definitely cause for concern.

… or am I just so screwed up in my thinking here that I should grab a spork and stab myself in my right eye?

What’s there for them to say? “Less is more” was always an untenable long-term position. The genie is out of the bottle, Google took their clone down but how many people are now building their own in response? 37 Signals now needs to learn a new catchphrase to replace “less is more”… “barrier to entry”.

Scott - go with the spork.

Maybe they were trying to make the point that something as simple as Campfire can be free with the new Google Apps Engine.

I think Google should take down Gtalk as well. I mean it is an outright copy of what Skype was doing years before. If you bow down to the cries of 37Signals why not offer the same courtesy to Skype?

Fair enough. Thanks Mike.

Tons of chat programs out that look/feel/act identical to each other. Kinda difficult to whip out a few hundred features on a tiny test project just so its not “stealing” someone else’s work.

I think Jason Fried’s little hissy fit is a waste of time, effort and just goes to dampen an open-based project platform.

I don’t think Google is censoring anything and all the hype about this by the bloggers is also a waste of time, effort and just goes to dampen an open-based project platform.

Get real. I don’t care how many customers 37Signals has, but I guarantee that I and mine are not and won’t be any time soon just because of this particular “issue”. Shame really because I tend to purchase a lot of web-based software. Good luck in the future sir.

Actually, I’m pretty disappointed in TechCrunches Michael Arrington who decided to hype this up as some sort of personal vendetta.

Also, the “libel” statement made by Christopher Mercer…anyone with any common sense should have noted almost immediately that it was a misspelling and the intention was actually “liable” and not “libel” just from how and where it was used in the sentence. I wasted a few seconds of my life reading the flaming comment replies by Michael Arrington. Thanks for that, it was not only entertaining (not in your favor) but educational (also not in your favor). Thus I dedicated a whole statement in reply to your nasty little retorts over a misspelled word. Who cares if the guy put in a few words he thought fit the situation….oops, you did evidentially.

Join a facebook group about this? How about being a bit more professional. I don’t read TechCrunch to engender someone else’s personal grudge about a perceived “censor”.

Jason, grow up.

Michael, you grow up too.

Why are you running to defend a big rich company and attack a small company (37signals) whose product Google tried to rip off?

If you liked Huddlechat, why not use Campfire, the original? It’s free. What’s so great about Google? The fact that it’s big, rich, and can crush little guys?

I find the article, and most of the comments, pretty sick.

Funny that 37Signals brings this out. 37Signals uses Amazon servers…

Michael, you said: “Frankly, the reaction is fairly ridiculous.” I’d like to hear you elaborate on that point, because the reaction seems reasonable and unsurprising to me. To anyone who’s used Campfire much, HuddleChat was an obvious clone, both in terms of features and design, and down to the smallest details. As you say, what Google did is not illegal, but it is certainly uncool (and maybe somewhat evil), and was bound to elicit negative comments from both the creators of Campfire and from the blogosphere at large.

But the obvious purpose of HuddleChat was to show off Google App Engine, not to be the next Gmail or Google Docs. When demonstrating new technology, like a programming framework or hosting environment, it’s useful to demo something that folks are familiar with, like a chat program, so that they’re evaluating the underlying technology and not so much the product/application itself. I think where Google blew it was by not crediting 37signals. They would have avoided this negative reaction if they’d prominently displayed a simple note like, “HuddleChat was inspired by Campfire, which is an awesome product by 37signals that we love. This is just a demo, but be sure to try to Campfire for all your business chat needs.”

Surely the main point here is that Google was ununaffiliated with this app, and pulled it. They even made a point of *saying* they were unaffiliated with it.

Given that the app was so trivial, this move strongly suggests they’ll pull any customer app that they don’t like; for any reason. Seems to me it will be a potential red flag for many developers against using App Engine for anything important.

It would be pretty interesting to see what happened if some non-Google employees on the App Engine early access program re-created this app and deployed it.

This was a stupid example to publish in the first place. If the dorks had at least stated that the purpose of the “COPY” was to show how groovy and easy it is to build a Campfire copy and give CREDIT to 37, then it may have been excusable.

They didn’t, they got sprung and 37 have the right to cry foul.

I’m glad they made this call. It’s not surprising that they were “affiliated” with the app developers. I mean, who are we kidding?

But it is funny to look at this from Google’s perspective.

“Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t!”

Google took this down as it brings up in people’s minds that Google can easily steal your website as they have all the code — not just the HTML and CSS but also all the code that drives the backend.

Yes any developer could easily do a “view - source” and see what’s going on and copy it feature for feature (as HuddleChat did) but with Google owning everything it makes it a lot easier. This whole App Engine idea is an easy and free way for Google to get free programming done for their future products.

Exactly. Develop a site they “don’t like” and it’s offline, just like that.

I used Huddle, liked it a lot and others in the office used it. This is ridiculous. Definitely makes me thing twice about using App Engine.

I’ll stick with AWS, thank you very much.

It seems quite obvious that if they say they’re ‘unaffiliated’ then they should act ‘unaffiliated’ and treat the in-house devs much like any public dev posting an app.

Then problem seems to be that if this is them acting unaffiliated then it strongly suggests censorship. I think the implications are unmistakable if they are in fact unaffiliated.

But it could easily be the case that this is google recognizing a certain amount of affiliation and doing the polite thing however then there is certainly conflicting messages being sent out; which does seem to warrant all this attention. Are they affiliated or aren’t they? And like others and the OP by Michael gets at, will this be the precedent set?

I’m sure Google would not take it down if they didn’t discover that there employees did in fact copy campfire. The developers probably wanted to do an experiment and create a clone of campfire.

When Google discovered this they did the right thing and took it down.

Cognitive Dissonance:

1. Everyone loves open source because paid-for software is evil.
2. Open source projects which copy closed source commercial software are good because you can get the same for free.
3. The way to make money from open source projects is consultancy, support contracts or Software as a Service.
4. Google which copies SaaS offerings is good because you can get the same for free.
5. We love Google. We think all good things should be free.
6. We have a trivial commercial app offered as SaaS.
7. Oh shit.

This is ridiculous. I believe it’s called competition. So does that mean that the first chat client should have been the only one? Does that mean that the first online bank should have been the only one? Does that mean that anytime somebody makes something, only they are allowed to make it? No, it’s called competition. HuddleChat was awesome for the hour or so I played around with it yesterday and I was really excited about using it. I even made sure some of my friends knew about it so they could use it, too.

Isn’t HuddleChat built on Google’s App Engine? If that’s the case, how can it be a rip-off?

If I was Huddle (who created a competitor to BaseCamp), I’d create a competitor to CampFire and call it Huddle Chat.

I didn’t know 37signals CEO was such a cry baby. I hope the rest of the company does not share the same view as he does. I just lost a lot of respect for a company that I think has nice products.

Of course I guess they should be upset because…

HuddleChat is almost exactly like campfire. The developers should just re-skin it and re-release it.

HuddleChat is just as good as campfire and it makes campfire look like a shallow app.

Now Google has one less reason to buy out 37Signals.

I do believe Google wouldn’t take HuddleChat down if it didn’t have good reason to and I doubt 37Signals comments are good reason.

Mike,

Get off your freaking techcrunch high horse. I dont care how many companies, service, web apps, etc you have profiled… i dont trust your word until you actually launch something successful.

I am with you on this Mike. The whole whining nonsense about the rip off is juvenile and I didn’t expect Google to surrender for such childish nonsense.

“We thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe its time to reevaluate what they stand for.”

Pffft. Whatever. One of the stupidest things I’ve heard in a LONG time.

@Yosef: You have no idea what you are talking about.

I don’t believe the inability of some people to get the point.
The point is NOT that HuddleChat is (was) a “campfire-like” application (because, after all, the “web chat application” concept really doesn’t leave much freedom to differentiate one product from the other). The point is that HuddleChat COPIED almost verbatim the design of campfire’s look & feel. I mean, how difficult would have been to come up with a different design? This is just uncool on Google’s part, and this is what the people at 37signals are pissed off about. On the other hand, maybe ripping off other people’s design could be the only way for Google to not make its applications suck big time in the interface department
Oh, and about the “Google is not affiliated with HuddleChat” crap… doesn’t Google own the code written by its employees?

Wow, 37 is whiny. I’ve never used Campfire, but Huddle was pretty much like IRC with some obvious adaptations for the Web.

Google, I don’t like that you’re doing search. There were several sites, including AltaVista, that did it first. Could you take it down please?

37s is shit scared python rips them a new one (via google apps). Color me retarded but I’m going with that. FYI, I dig Ruby and RoR and use it all day except on Sundays cause that’s when I have to bath my dog.

One wonders if you are retarded. Censorship? How ridiculous! How is Google taking down their own product censorship in any way? They are free to do with it as they please.

And who claimed that 37 Signals invented this type of application? Nobody. All people said was that it was a blatant copy of the user interface. Nobody said it should be illegal - just that it was a very tasteless act.

People simply suggested that they get some class and design their own interface, come up with something more original. How does that come anywhere close to the way you are portraying the criticism?

I wonder if anyone noticed the HuddleChat logo has a striking resemblance to the TechCrunch logo.

How about the fact that a tool called Huddle (http://www.huddle.net) has already existed for well over a year and has trademarks registered all over the place? Poor research.

@37:

The “Hello World!” application was first written and launched by me. It employed intelligent design patterns and came with a rather verbose manual.

Isn’t it ironic that HuddleChat - a clone of Campfire was announced in Campfire One. So much publicity for Campfire in a day.

37signals use AmazonS3

Jeff Bezos is an investor in 37 Signals.

Perspective.

So you have to worry about Google ripping down your app if a competitor complains about it? No thanks.

Really Good

This reminds me of another 37signals/campfire story I once heard…

http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/r.....hetto.html (search for “echo2″)

http://demo.nextapp.com/ChatClient/app

Let call a spade a spade.

Wow, lots of comments (I stopped reading at 42). Obviously an engaging topic.

I say give the app to the people. Let us decide what we like better and 37 and GOOG can duke it out that way. A contest of sorts, yeah.

That’s the way it should be - we’re the ones that decide what’s good and what’s not - what should stay and what needs to go. Not the other way around.

With that said - Deep down, I understand why GOOG did what it did, I’m just bummed that was their final decision.

The rip off stems from an almost verbatim copy of the design and look-n-feel of the application. This may or may not be “legal”, and this is beside the point. It’s simply morally very uncool, especially given the profile of the involved parties.

The point is very similar to a few cases where a web site ripped of its design from another (even it not competing).

It’s not useful to draw upon straw-man arguments.

Thoughts:

1. Google should innovate (even unaffiliated colleagues) not imitate.

2. Software developers should really consider where they build their home - Amazon Web Services vs. Google App Engine (I know each are a little different) but personally I feel less threatened as a software person working with Amazon vs. Google specifically for reason 3 and 5 below.

3. Google can monetize your app (or their apps) in a way you can’t so developing on the App Engine creates a playing field tilted in Google’s favor. They don’t need to charge for an application, they just run AdSense into it to in order to make money. Google has an insatiable thirst for page views and App Engine feeds into this need.

4. All the Fried haters need to step back and think. If your business is building software and you are reliant on subscription fees and don’t sell advertising (e.g., AdSense) you will protect yourself. I think many people devolving to name calling have never sat in a seat similar to Jason’s. I do.

5. In the long run Google wants to own the internet (ok, just organize all the information but what else is there then?) and that includes anything you build. Anyone in software, especially SaaS, has to operate in this paradigm and not kid themselves. Smart folks will figure out how to give customers reasons to stay with them and not flee to Google because if Google is not in your software space today, they will be there very soon.

P.S. - @Travis N. - well put.

Exceptionally witty today Mr. Arrington, I am liking it!

This only proves that 37signals just can’t compete and makes products which are easy to re implement. They don’t own a patent and really should just admit that their layout looks exactly like the multitude of aim clients out there. Is their client designed well? Perhaps, but perhaps it is just a “natural” layout for a chat window, a reply window and tool bar.

What if these guys actually read the 37signals book on design philosophy, they followed it and produced huddlechat? Would you wringe your hands and whine just as vigorously.

Grow up and compete, it is a free market and huddlechat didn’t steal anything but a total lack of features.

I think it is pathetic that you can shit out a simple derivative chat client and the whine vigorously someone has reimplemented in the style du jour. Grow up 37 Signals. You app is not revolutionary, we’ve had billions of chat clients just like it before.

QQ
37 Signals is way overrated. Too many quick fanboy reviews with out any indepth testing of a buggy, poorly documented, and overpriced product. 37Signals huge arrogance makes it all worse.

I’m with Google and 37Signals on this one. Google didn’t go to this effort to make it easy for people to write knock offs, they did so in the hopes developers would innovate. The app reflects poorly on the developers and Google

A lazy post and lazy comments from the rabble, start thinking Michael and others and add some value.

if you deliberately make featureless software don’t be surprised when people “copy” it

The only thing more pathetic than 37 Signals whining about this is 90 of us whining about them.

God, we suck.

37signals made the smart business move. If someone copies my site I’m going to fight like hell to get them to take it down. In this case, it worked.

Should Google have taken it down? They were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either way it’s a pr screw up, which is all that matters to them.

@MNT “37signals made the smart business move. If someone copies my site I’m going to fight like hell to get them to take it down. In this case, it worked.”

Geez, why don’t you start a record label?

37Signals is just going to have to get creative with their business model and learn how to compete with free. This pisses me off so much I think I’ll make a free campfire clone in my spare time. Once I finish watching all these torrent videos…

This is just the beginning of the end for these micro-feature web 2.0 sites. Now there will pop up hundreds of competitors that have no hosting costs.

I think Google’s right. This should lead to a great movement of web innovation.

it’s so sad, makes elgoog a wussy in the cloud, and it’s being twittered heavily, including this bit: http://tinyurl.com/3j24nd

I agree with both sides in the sense that Google needs a product like this within the small business ecosystem, but that a direct copy is in nobodies interest. The fact that Amazon has invested in 37Signals is not lost on me. But still, some class please.

It was likely a developer developing, as opposed to a team designing and developing, but sometimes a bit of forethought is necessary.

Definitely quite ridiculous on what’s going on in just the 24 hours after App Engine came out. It is a shame that we’ll never know what was going on in the minds of the coders and if they were really pulling off a silent microsoft, but in all fairness, it was a good PR move that Google take down the application. It was just too good to be true.

Michael Arrington has jumped the shark.

Sorry Michael, but it’s clear that you’re responding emotionally here, presumably because you

1. Have a vested interest in positive PR for the Google App Engine release, or
2. Have a vendetta against 37signals and/or Jason Fried

or both. Legality aside, the point is that Google blatantly ripped off a site, and there’s just no class in doing something like that.

HuddleChat is like the CHINTENDO Vii. (Yes, that’s “Vii” instead of “Wii”.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyeIkW_LGrQ

The Vii may be legal, but it stoops so low it’s unbelievable.

Why do you think Google took down HuddleChat? They’re not stupid. Google doesn’t want to become the Chintendo Vii of the software world, especially during the launch of a platform that has a lot of promise.

Michael Arrington, you’re normally on your game, but you lost your objectivity on this one.

@96 you hit the nail on the head, this is just the first shot across the bow, this thing is going to be a kick in the balls to a whole swath of Web 2.0 ethos. Do one thing and do it well was a Pollyanna pipe dream

@100 LOLZ, Chintendo Vii! Yes! Exactly! You also nailed it, there are going to be hundreds of cheap knock-offs using this thing, Google just primed the pump… Don’t you understand that once you rip out user authentication and management and database design and administration out of most Web 2.0 apps, that theres just a thin layer of functionality and a thinner layer of marketing left?

So ridiculous that this got taken down. There’s enough prior art that nobody could get a patent on this, and the vast amount of prior art also proves that this is a common sense thing. Given the amount of chat programs and the actual copyright laws (not the fake ones someone mentioned above) Google should have never taken this down, as it only gives credibility to 37Signals in the view of the public. It would’ve been much better to show some chat room examples predating Campfire and explain the laws in basic English. I think this would’ve turned everyone blaming Google for copying against 37Signals for their BS statement.

As far as the laws go, prior art is something that prevents you from getting a patent if it can be proven, and does nothing else. The only lawsuit I’m aware of after having taken some computer law classes are dependent on 37Signals actually somehow having their chat room copyrighted and then proving that Google copied their code, or if they have a copyright on the page design and can show that not only are the colors and layout virtually identical the underlying code needs to also match up. So even if they look exactly the same on top, if one uses div’s while the other is table based there’s no infringement. Looking over the comparison screenshots elsewhere it looks to me like the underlying structure on them would have to be quite different, and I know they’re written in different coding environments so basically 37Signals would have no case even if they somehow had copyrights for their stuff (I think that with their minimalist design it’d be hard for them to copyright that too based on obviousness and prior art).

The issue isn’t that it’s Google. The issue isn’t that they copied 37signals. The issue isn’t even that the app was a blatant, pixel-for-pixel rip-off. The issue is that Google launched a developer platform with an obvious rip-off. What developer will trust a huge corporation if the first thing they do is rip off a ten-people company?

I am torn about how I feel about HuddleChat. I do like the idea of free, alternative competition to make everyone better — but, is it fair competition when the person giving away the ‘free’ is Google?

I just blogged about this debate on my blog and would like to know what you think…

http://webpoet.wordpress.com/2.....uddlechat/

It’s worth looking at the comment stream on the original RWW post about this. Jason Fried gets into the discussion towards the end. Comment 54 is spot on in pointing out how hypocritical and weak Fried’s whining is. I also comment on this at 42 and 53.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/ar.....p#comments

It’s also worth looking at the post that Fried left after they had an outage in January…take a look at the comments.

http://www.37signals.com/svn/p.....is-morning

Notice the similar pattern? Fried blames someone else (in this case Google, in the previous case Rackspace), the community jumps all over them (in this case for whining and being hypocritical, in the first case for blaming Rackspace when the problem was really that 37signals didn’t have a backup load balancer) and then Jason claims that he “wasn’t really saying that.” In the mean-time Rackspace gets trashed for something that was 37signals fault and Google takes down an app that would have served the market well.

Narcissistic and hypocritical.

It’s worth looking at the comment stream on the original RWW post about this. Jason Fried gets into the discussion towards the end. Comment 54 is spot on in pointing out how hypocritical and weak Fried’s whining is. I also comment on this at 42 and 53.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/ar.....p#comments

It’s also worth looking at the post that Fried left after 37signals had an outage in January…take a look at the comments.

http://www.37signals.com/svn/p.....is-morning

Notice the similar pattern? Fried blames someone else (in this case Google, in the previous case Rackspace), the community jumps all over them (in this case for whining and being hypocritical, in the first case for blaming Rackspace when the problem was really that 37signals didn’t have a backup load balancer) and then Jason claims that he “wasn’t really saying that.” In the mean-time Rackspace gets trashed for something that was 37signals fault and Google takes down an app that would have served the market well.

Narcissistic and hypocritical.

@102 Are you on drugs? Just about every product Google has except for maybe search had a ten-person company competing with them when Google launched their service. There were several ten-person companies producing online word-processors, spreadsheets, etc. before Google launched Google Docs. What number of employees does it make a difference against Google, anyway? 20? 30? 100? Were you crying for Technorati when Google launched blogsearch.google.com? The problem here isn’t Google, the problem is that 37 Signals deliberately chose, via a non-viable long-term corporate and product strategy, to leave themselves exposed to this sort of thing. And 37 Signals isn’t a new company either - they’ve been around about as long as Google, so who’s fault is it that they’re still a ten-person company?

Anyone notice that HuddleChat is still listed as the “Featured Project” on the Google App Engine Community page? http://code.google.com/appengine/ You’d think someone might’ve taken the time to update that by now.

@104 - And of those products, which one of those copied another product feature for feature with an identical user interface? Seriously, which one was a full blown clone instead of a new implementation of a concept?

Some of the posts I’m reading here are ludicrous. How can anyone defend Google’s actions on this? No one is complaining that they made a chat app, they are complaining that they blatantly ripped off an existing one. Taking it down was the logical response, but not demoing a clone would have been the appropriate thing to do in the first place.

Isn’t the elephant in the room here something else?

Yes, this particular incident, this particular reaction might be questionable, or easy to poke fun at. But isn’t it what’s looming over the horizon that causes this kind of knee jerk? And I guess that 37signals aren’t the only ones wondering…

What happens when everything gets copied, is free, and hosted by Google and nobody except Google is making any money? Isn’t this the equivalent of a Bundling the Browser anti-trust case on steroids?

At what point *does* the Anti-Trust investigation begin?

so campfire basically copies AOL chat rooms circa 1989 and then when someone copies them they cry foul? yeah, that makes sense.

The noise about this is getting ridiculous. If 37signal complaint or made an allusion that google copied their application, then it’s a childish media attention move.

Low barrier of entry comes to mind. In other words, there is no competitive advantage to signal’s application. Hey, look, google copied my input type text and button combination…

“And why, since HuddleChat is not an official Google product, was it Google that made the decision to pull it down and not the developers who created it? Google was very careful to say that they were not affiliated with HuddleChat while it was up - that, apparently, wasn’t the case.”

You know, it’s entirely possible that Google has contracted with its developers to ensure that if the developers create something on the platform that violates or potentially violates someone elses’ intellectual property, then Google can pull it. That doesn’t mean Google owns or controls any of it. They likely just retain the right to not have infringing material on their platform. Smart move, it seems, rather than censorship or some show of affiliation.

Not that I know any of this or anything about the situation: I just know how I would cover my bases if I were Google.