Google Takes Down HuddleChat After Complaints [Warning]

desmondhaynes writes "There were striking similarities between one of Google's App Engine demos, HuddleChat (a real-time chat application) and the Campfire app from 37Signals. Google has taken HuddleChat down from the App Engine app gallery." Google explains: 'The App Engine team was looking for some sample apps to help kick the tires on their new system, so we invited Googlers to build some as side projects. A couple of our colleagues here built HuddleChat in their spare time because they wanted to share work within their team more easily and thought persistent web chat would do the trick. We've heard some complaints from the developer community, though, so rather than divert attention from Google App Engine itself, we thought it better to just take HuddleChat down.'" We noted the launch of Google's App Engine yesterday.

Update: 04/10 14:51 GMT by KD : A reader wrote in to warn that the link in this article is infected. Windows users beware, and have your AV up-to-date.

Whiners

[by Anonymous Coward]

If your business model is based on such a trivial application, why should anyone care if you fail?

Re:

[Thought1 (1132989)]

Exactly. Get a clue, people. Stop trying to patent the frikkin' XOR cursor loop.

Re:Whiners

[NoTheory (580275)]

No, if 37signals business model is that trivial.

The complaints are ironic if what Zed Shaw says [zedshaw.com] is true:

Well, silly boys and girls, rails-core ripped off the idea and probably most of the workings for Campfire from NextApp Echo2 ChatClient Demo. [searchenginewatch.com] I know this because I was in the rails-core IRC channel and I showed them how cool this Echo2 framework was, including that chat demo. A few weeks later they had Campfire and since they say it took them two weeks to write it, Iâ(TM)m guessing they got lots of inspiration.

Re:

[easyTree (1042254)]

* Warning: similarity detected between two things contained within the universe. Lawyers are being dispatched to your location. do - not - move! *

*Sigh* - 'Tired of the "this idea is mine and noone else's" now. Please stop.
 

Re:

[easyTree (1042254)]

I'm mean really, how far would football as 'sport' have gotten if every team was required to have their own shape of ball? Yes, I realise the USAnians have already made a start on this :D but at least they share the ball between two parties; both of whom have several indirect common goals.

Whatever happened to:
a) 'hey, look what I can do'
b) 'cool; if I take what you did and add *this*..'
c) 'omg yeah, waaay cool'
d) goto b

now it's:
a) 'hey, look what I can do'
b) 'cool; if I take

37Signals should learn to innovate, not whine

[by Anonymous Coward]

If you want it make it big by offering minimalism don't be surprised when someone does exactly the same thing. The 37 Signals developers and DHH should be ashamed of themselves for claiming huddlechat is a rip off, it is an obvious idea and plenty of other websites had implemented similar chat system BEFORE campfire ever came around.

It is funny how a company who sells a book on design philsophy complains when someone else uses that philosophy.

If you deliberately make featureless software don't be surprised when people "copy" it, even as a tech demo.

Compete and Innovate.

Re:37Signals should learn to innovate, not whine

[by Anonymous Coward]

I agree, I followed this controversy and frankly the issue is that both huddlechat and campfire look exactly like many of the AIM clients out there. They have the same layout and very similar features. They even look like toned down MSN chat applications. If you design to the style du-jour it is totally likely that you will look similar especially in a similar arena, chat clients. I think the issue here is that the domain is so minimal that any client who tries the bare minimum of ajax web chat with file uploads will end up being the same. So I guess 37signals is claiming they somehow own the minimal implementation. Well they don't, it is an obvious idea and they should buck up.

Re:37Signals should learn to innovate, not whine

[ShieldW0lf (601553)]

I wrote something like this 5 years ago, so we could have a chat meeting with some clients who were behind a corporate firewall. It wasn't that pretty, but it did pretty much the same thing, and it only took a couple of hours to write.

I would be ashamed to put something so trivial out into the community and charge people money for it.

Wish my girlfriend bent over as quickly and easily as Google.

So, when will Google be taking down every other service offering they have besides search? Everything they offer outside of Search and Google Earth are "me-too" products when you get right down to it.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Wish my girlfriend bent over as quickly and easily as Google.

She does.

Re:37Signals should learn to innovate, not whine

[StallmanHearties (1270282)]

This is also ignoring the issue that this company is selling the software as a service. Which means you are paying for timesharing. If it were free software you could install it on your machine and provide a service to people you care about. You could also ensure your privacy by installing it on your own machine. Timesharing is generally bad because it means you have no freedom to change and 37signals has long had a history of ignoring customer feature requests.

IAWTP. Innovation that Campfire should offer:

[Enlarged to Show Tex (911413)]

Computerized smoke signals

Re:IAWTP. Innovation that Campfire should offer:

[calebt3 (1098475)]

I know! Let's call it UDP!

Re:IAWTP. Innovation that Campfire should offer:

[Enoxice (993945)]

I just thought you should know that I've tried explaining this to everyone around me that heard me laughing, and I think I failed at it.

Re:

[geminidomino (614729)]

You bastard... do you have any idea what green tea in the sinuses FEELS like?!

Re:

[cmacb (547347)]

"Seriously, unless the Google version clearly took a trademark or other creative content from them *or* literally took actual CODE from them, then who the hell cares?"

Apparently people who work for 37signals, and all their family and friends, and friends of friends. The Google group on this seemed to have about 3 to 1 diatribes about how evil it was to steal this pathetic concept. If I were Google I would have just told them to screw themselves... but the bad PR 37signals will get for being wuss programme

IRC rip-off?

[by Anonymous Coward]

"Persistent web chat," eh -- the idea sounds so novel, I'm sure they must have pirated source code straight from "campfire" -- unless this is just a web frontend to IRC, like yahoo! chat or something like that.

What's the big friggin' deal? Not that I've ever even heard of Campfire anyway, but it doesn't sound unique in any meaningful way.

and first post.

Re:

[TheBracket (307388)]

Even if its not an IRC front-end, "persistent" web-chat is hardly a novel concept. Heck, I had it running (in ASP, blech) on a site I created back in 1999 - complete with "rooms" that retained their state/history, searchable logs, etc. It's not exactly rocket science.

Re:

[Hatta (162192)]

If you just need a persistent IRC session, use irssi & screen. It can't be beat.

Please help me out here

[Fuzuli (135489)]

I'm not sure I am getting the reason for taking this app down. Really. If I were to clone an app to demonstrate a new platform, would that be a problem? So, what is the possibility of Google taking down google docs, in response to complaints from MS, or some other online office software provider?
No bad intentions here, I just don't get it. Care to enlighten me?

Re:Please help me out here

[MozeeToby (1163751)]

I think they pulled the app mostly for PR reasons; not that the app generated tons of bad PR but that it was distracting people from what google wanted them talking about. Rather than argue about their right to have the app, they simply pulled it so people wouldn't be able to argue about it on the blogosphere.

Re:Please help me out here

[kingcool1432 (993113)]

they simply pulled it so people wouldn't be able to argue about it on the blogosphere.

Front page on Slashdot. Wow, they sure dodged that bullet.

Re:

[mweather (1089505)]

That's not funny, that's insightful.

Re:

[PitaBred (632671)]

Yup. But their statement made the front page too. Which is the important bit... WHY they took it down.

Re:Please help me out here

[Otter (3800)]

So, what is the possibility of Google taking down google docs, in response to complaints from MS, or some other online office software provider?

As best I understand, the Ruby on Rails cultists are one of the main developer groups they're counting on as App Engine customers, so they don't want to offend its leader. Annoying Microsoft doesn't cost them anyone they want to work with, and might help.

Re:Please help me out here

[syphax (189065)]

This is ./, we don't understand pragmatism. Unless we're coding.

Re:

[Alsee (515537)]

we don't understand pragmatism. Unless we're coding.

Programmer One: What's this code here?

Programmer Two explains five pages of adaptive enhanced Quicksort code.

Programmer One: Wow, those are some pretty impressive techniques to speed up quicksort, and it cleverly solves the Quicksort worst-case running time problem to boot. But we're only sorting a list of five items, wouldn't it be more pragmatic to just use Bubblesort?

Programmer Two reaches under his desk and literally pulls out home built working replic

Sour grapes.

[by Anonymous Coward]

37Signals is the marketing force behind Ruby on Rails, and Google's AppEngine is heavily geared toward Django, which the RoR world seems to consider a big threat due to Django's allegedly superior robustness and speed. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd spent their time since the announcement of AppEngine looking for something to act martyred about and hopefully redirect some buzz toward their own offering.

In which case Google probably did the right thing disabling the trivial app before the buzz hijack could succeed.

Or maybe I've been in this industry too long and I'm just way bitter, I don't know.

Re:

[OutOnARock (935713)]

Maybe the RoR gang, with their "The Rails Way" or the highway, are really worried about:

1. Google using Python instead of Ruby.
2. Google not drinking the DHH RoR koolaid.
3. DHH et. al. quaking in their tiny little boots that "Google+Guido+Python3000+the webframework that BLOWS AWAY Rails" will finally put the buggy Rails framework in a coffin.

Python blows Ruby away. Ruby survives commercially because it has Rails for simple web apps. Not scaling yet to play in the tall grass with the big dog

Re:Sour grapes.

[Achromatic1978 (916097)]

Right. And the email from a founder of 37S complaining "is not official"... here's a hint: If something motivates you enough to put a slide in a presentation saying "Fuck You", someone's gotten under your skin.

Could you be the prototypical RoR apologist?

Re:

[mounthood (993037)]

No bad intentions here, I just don't get it. Care to enlighten me?

I think it goes like this:

• * Doing great UI design is important.
• * We spend lots of time and effort on the UI. ex. http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/887-design-decisions-calendar-picker-for-backpack-reminders [37signals.com]
• * They *exactly* copied our hard work.

Think in terms of Apple complaining that someone copied the iPod UI. It doesn't seem fair that someone can trivially copy something that takes so much time and effort. Good design should be rewarded and encouraged. Of course I don't know how that should work

Re:

[randyest (589159)]

Judging by the side-by-side shot in the article, I'd say your use of the word "exactly" is unwarranted. Moreover, I'd challenge you to show or describe a UI for such a simple chat tool that looks less like yours than the one google made.

I don't see the problem.

[maciarc (1094767)]

They both look like chat apps. How many different ways is there to show a chat window, a text entry box and a list of people in the room?

more importantly..

[thermian (1267986)]

How is their product even saleable?

I mean, how much can they seriously expect to make from a cut down chat client when there are a gazzillion billion and two chat clients already out there?

Campfire is hardly innovative

[tolan-b (230077)]

It's just a nice web interface to a chat room, hardly revolutionary. Anyone getting hot under the collar about someone copying it has a great future ahead of them in the patent troll business.

Sure if they copied it exactly feature for feature and took the interface then it's understandable but otherwise...

Real-time chat applications are overrated

[Tibor the Hun (143056)]

When I need to reach my contacts on the blogosphere 2.0, to let them know, for example when I'm doing lunch, or taking a vac-a, I just que up my batch chat application, que up the chats in that, (including my questions and a list of possible answers) and presto.. 45 minutes later the batch is done, and all of my contacts are notified, and we had a meaningful (though somewhat predictable) conversation.

I don't know who really needs real-time chat, except maybe pilots, or UAV operators.

Re:Real-time chat applications are overrated

[Ctrl-Z (28806)]

I just call my secretary.

Re:

[Tibor the Hun (143056)]

Thank you!
I will try to remember that.
I'll blame it on my ESL nature.
(For years I used to pronounce "Kludge" as "fudge" with a K. No one knew what I was saying.)

Also, I see my original post is up to +3 insightful... Come on mods. Batch-chat?

How are either of these anything new?

[phpmysqldev (1224624)]

Based on this article I think I will make a low feature program that allows people to look at remote "pages" and view them in a standardized format. Yes, yes similar things have been done before, but my product will be sub par and do nothing revolutionary.

And if anyone else tries to "copy" that Ill go after them with a vengeance.

Re:How are either of these anything new?

[atlastiamborn (1252206)]

Are you saying you're going to develop a web-based web browser?

That would be like totally awesome, imagine being able to browse the web from any web-capable device!

Real-time chat patent pending?

[by Anonymous Coward]

So now businesses trying to claim inventions even if they didn't register patents?

Re:

[evanbd (210358)]

Actually, "Hey, we thought of that first. Don't steal our ideas, please." seems like a much better way of doing things than patents and lawsuits. It seems to me that Google is just being polite, here. 37Signals is being a bit asinine, but if it matters to them and not to Google, why shouldn't they honor the request?

huh?

[apodyopsis (1048476)]

I applaud them for their principled stand, but I ridicule them for this decision. It was surely taken in the interests of staving off a good 'ole web flaming then any sensible grounds. There are so many of these applications of this style and format around that I find it hard buy their argument.

And I, for one, would find this kind of demo application extremely interesting. It always interesting to see how these things are done.

Bottom line - I think there is nothing intrinsically special with this kind of application, any of us with a modest amount of programming experience could of knocked it up. It is always interested to see a standard basic application in a new system as a common ground to allow ease of adoption. For that reason there is a bunch of "hello worlds", "simple graphs" and so forth. On a web development system you would expect by the same argument to see "tables", "blogs", "portals" and the "simple chat" as their demos. This is like MS trying to stop the notepad demo that comes with some windows compilers, or LiveJournal trying to stop the blog demo that came with GWT. Totally Daft.

Go on, reinstate it!

Re:huh?

[ezzzD55J (697465)]

any of us with a modest amount of programming experience could of knocked it up

AAAAAAAAAARGH

The REAL Reason

[garett_spencley (193892)]

Google had spent a couple weeks developing HuddleChat but then they read this [slashdot.org] Slashdot story on Monday and realized that they are all/mostly introverts and really don't like Chat and IM programs after all.

The 37Signals story is just a cover-up so they don't look silly.

They should have made the code available

[jocknerd (29758)]

It would have been nice to see the code for a "real" working app on App Engine.

here is what started it all

[hashmap (613482)]

"We're flattered Google thinks Campfire is a great product," said Jason Fried, 37signals CEO and co-founder. "We're just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically copy it feature for feature, layout for layout. We thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe its time to reevaluate what they stand for." From http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080408-123318 [searchenginewatch.com]

Re:

[Chyeld (713439)]

Really? [searchenginewatch.com]

"We're flattered Google thinks Campfire is a great product," said Jason Fried, 37signals CEO and co-founder. "We're just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically copy it feature for feature, layout for layout. We thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe its time to reevaluate what they stand for."

Re:If it was MS instead of Google...

[Chyeld (713439)]

Substitute Microsoft for Google and yes, people would be far more up in arms about it.

"Why?" you ask? Do you really need that spelt out for you?

Microsoft has based its entire business history on unethical actions and slippery business tactics. They did not get ahead in the world by being the best at their products; they got ahead by screwing over anyone they could get away with screwing.

Google on the other hand has based its rep and business practices on delivering the 'best' product. They haven't gotten ahead by double dealing, underhanded tactics, or screwing over people.

Yes, Google HAS done things that people don't agree with. But none of the things that people point out are deliberate attempts to screw with people.

Microsoft got in bed with companies telling them that they were specifically planning on doing X, while secretly planning on doing Y. They did this, as has been documented, to give Microsoft an edge in its own competing product.

Google has had van drivers accidentally drive up someone's driveway while taking low resolution pictures. One had malice in their intent; one simply made a mistake.

Microsoft stole, actually STOLE, someone's code and distributed it as part of Win9x. They didn't even bother to remove the copyright strings in the binary and only stopped distributing it when they were found guilty by a jury (see Stac Electronics).

Google had two engineers in their off time who copied an extremely generic idea and placed it in their gallery of "look what you can do with this new toy we have!" and took it down when it became apparent that there would be hard feelings over it.

There is a reason why Microsoft gets the shit treatment and Google doesn't. And it's not because everyone here has "Google fever". It's because so far Google acts responsibly and ethically while so far Microsoft acts predatory and unethically.

Re:

[qaam (609419)]

Good points. I applaud Google for acting responsibly here by taking down HuddleChat quickly. In general Google is a "good" company; they certainly don't deserve the "shit" treatment in the way that MS does.

Google had two engineers in their off time who copied an extremely generic idea and placed it in their gallery of "look what you can do with this new toy we have!" and took it down when it became apparent that there would be hard feelings over it.

I agree that Campfire is a totally generic idea; however, its execution is not. Of course it only took Google employees two weeks to copy Campfire... after all, the Google guys didn't have to do any thought, they just had to bang out code to do mimic Campfire's ideas. How long would it take for two Goo

Where is it? Umm. Here....

[Chyeld (713439)]

From your friendly "site:google.com evil" Google query....

Here? [google.com]

Google Code of Conduct Preface

"Don't be evil." Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But "Don't be evil" is much more than that. Yes, it's about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it's also about doing the right thing more generally - following the law, acting honorably and treating each other with respect.