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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.
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.
If your business model is based on such a trivial application, why should anyone care if you fail?
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.
"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.
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?
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?
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...
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.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
got their panties in a bunch and freaked out ...
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.
So now businesses trying to claim inventions even if they didn't register patents?
Computerized smoke signals
Without their huddle chat?
A: Time for no huddle offense!
"Know but never fear the consequences of your actions."
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!
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?
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
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.
Google had spent a couple weeks developing HuddleChat but then they read this 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.
It would have been nice to see the code for a "real" working app on App Engine.
We Stole their idea, and we did it so unsubtly that we can't even slightly pretend we didn't. It was this or get into a storm of lawsuits and bad PR.
Google has nothing to lose: Some Google Apps Engine developer will soon enough put up HuddleChat 2. Google will look chivalrous, and 37signals will still get poked in the eye.
I was using my Huddle account yesterday and now its gone.
I want to complain my stuff is missing.
VCs time to divest from campfirenow its only time before someone starts there own "huddle" like product on Google.
I am surprised no one has cried censorship from Google. If they put down an app from a complaint from just one developer, think what they would do if say a big government asks it to do something!
This almost looks like google saying "won't feed the trolls"
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Google = web search engine and company
Googol = 10^100
I'm surprised most slashdotters seem to think that Google was in the right here. Let's leave out Google's name and see how the story sounds:
A company with over 10,000 employees duplicates a 10 person company's product feature for feature, even down to the animation effects, and gives it away for free.
Substitute MS for Google in this story and slashdotters would be flaming mad. It's not that Google just created a similar chat app to Campfire, it's that they created a carbon clone of Campfire, which is despicable no matter the company that does the cloning. The argument that Google's not responsible, since they're just hosting, is bogus. Google employees created this clone, meaning that it's Google's property.
Everyone keeps jumping on 37Signals for being whiners, but they haven't said anything about this in their blog. This is a case of the "blogosphere" getting up in arms about something on behalf of the "victim" without the victim ever lifting a finger.
Shinma
"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
Campfire was released on 16 February 2006, while we had this on a website I'm an admin at since mid-2001. PHP and some JS. It works to this day and looks the same, although it was rewritten several times throughout the years to use AJAX instead of a reloaded frame.
/. crowd trying the thing out...
No, I'm not giving you an URL - I wish I could, to prove my words, but the server load is high enough without the
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
Google doesn't want to get a reputation for ripping people off, so baseless as these accusations are, they had to pull it.
Still, anybody who complained to Google about similarities to 37Signals should get a life. 37Signals didn't invent simplicity and they didn't invent any of the application categories they are making money with. Nor is there anything illegal, unethical, or even bad about re-implementing someone else's application.
(I also find the 37Signals applications overpriced and underperforming, but that's a separate debate.)
I don't remember the "moan about other people's demo apps" bit from "Getting Real".
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
By the way, where have you actually seen the phrase "Do No Evil"?
From www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html:
6. You can make money without doing evil.
The chapter isn't about grand ideals for a corporation, it's about better advertising practices.
"Do No Evil" has never been Google's corporate motto. Nor have they ever claimed anything like that. (Sorry if I burst somebody's bubble, "Do No Evil" has been a popular Slashdot meme for quite a while...)
Here?
Anyone else think this is a weird coincidence that Google App Engine was unveiled during an event named "Campfire One"?
http://www.iwannachat.net/. It's basically a rather modern AJAX persistent web chat. I don't know how it compares with Huddlechat since I didn't follow the news yesterday and now its down :-/
:)
Please pardon the testing crap in the demo room
Don't quote me on this.
What Google needs to do is to bring HuddleChat back as a addition to it's office applications. Of course it would be ridiculous to make all the features the same and include the same layout as Campfire but with all the genius minds at Google I'm sure they can put a twist on things. If HuddleChat was a official Google Apllication it would attract more users to their Office Suite. Dont give it up, Bring it back better then ever.
I am a lowly high school student... please dont assume im an expert.
Go check it out, then come back and tell me that Campfire is a feature-for-feature clone:
http://demo.nextapp.com/ChatClient/app
This is just chat, and chat's been done hundreds of times. Campfire is so much more.
You surely cannot expect us to believe that you'd prefer an America where:
* people consider each other's welfare to be important
* those in power are working for the people they represent
* those in power aren't corrupt
* those in power don't invade foreign countries to steal their natural resources and murder the poplulace
* corporations all have worthwhile products and advertise them to you in a life-enhancing manner
* the future of mankind is considered to be important
* people say what they mean and do what they've said they'll do
That's just crazy-talk...
Requiem for the American Dream
the link in the parent post to the huddlechat debate, launches a website that produces spyware script and over 15 cookies.
>(a real-time chat application)
As opposed to a delayed-delivery chat application? Say, there's an idea! Let's invent that - we could use the postal system as a model, but this would be a computerized version of it! Electronic mail, if you will, or e-mail for short. Why, the possibilities are endless!
Oh, wait...
Slashdot has been overrun by idiots, and their article submissions prove it. Hell, I gave up on spelling and grammar ages ago, as they appear to be beyond the capacity of far too many here now, but this is saddening. Why not have articles about NIC cards while we're at it? To elevate the conversation, we could discuss the best way to create PIN numbers for ATM machines - that's always a page hit generator.
Also, while I'm ranting: WTF is a "runch"? As in "http://techrunch.blogspot.com/"? I get the "tech" part of it - but "runch"? Well, I guess someone that uses "real-time" and "chat" together also knows what a "runch" is.
In addition, I really enjoyed the ad: Being a nerd, I've always secretly wanted to learn how to dance like the stars, and I appreciate having the opportunity to do so brutally shoved down my throat.
"Desmond" should be ashamed for submitting this article (CTO? Ha! "Techie at heart"? Yeah, right), which appears to be a blatant self-promoting advertisement, and Taco even more so for accepting it.
If that's a picture of you on your blog, Desmond, kindly have someone take an axe and use it where indicated. You've done the markup, it'd be a shame to let it go to waste.
Thank you in advance for your attention in this matter. Let's not do runch, OK?
I feel better now. Well, a little - now all I need is some caffeine *grin*
Ah, Slashdot: "Standards? We don't need no steenking standards!"