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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.
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.
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.
Computerized smoke signals
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.
"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
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.
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 Google employees to create a carbon clone of facebook? Maybe four weeks, maybe five. How long would it take for you to create your own Jackson Pollock?
The point is: it's the creative thought that's the hard part, not actually executing an idea. People who defend Google's actions by claiming that Campfire is "generic" don't realize how much work actually goes in to designing a product.
Another reply said that I must work at 37 Signals. No. I'm a happy PhD student; I don't want to be a code monkey because cranking out code to do exactly what someone else's spec says is thoughtless.