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

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

Re:Whiners

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.

37Signals should learn to innovate, not whine

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

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

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:37Signals should learn to innovate, not whine

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:

Computerized smoke signals

Re:IAWTP. Innovation that Campfire should offer:

I know! Let's call it UDP!

Re:IAWTP. Innovation that Campfire should offer:

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.

Please help me out here

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

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

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:Please help me out here

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

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

Sour grapes.

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.

I don't see the problem.

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..

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

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

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

I just call my secretary.

How are either of these anything new?

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?

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!

huh?

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!

The REAL Reason

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.

here is what started it all

"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]