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Startup Claims Google Copied Web-Annotation Product

Posted by timothy on from the evil-or-coincidence dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Web annotation startup ReframeIt claim Google copied their web annotation product when releasing Google Sidewiki. At first glance, the products do look quite similar, and this eWeek article has some interesting evidence, including suspicious user registrations by Google employees and an attempt by Google to hire off ReframeIt's lead engineer."

1 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Comparison shots didn't persuade me by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Neither one of them is original. People have been coming out with "we'll let you annotate/comment on/mark up" web pages since at least 1999 (which is how far back I looked when the place I was working at came up with "this great new idea to comment on and rate web pages". After almost a week of discussions among themselves (owners and marketing) they told us about their "new idea." My response was "did you take even 5 minutes to check if someone has done it before? It's not new, it's stupid as shit because people who are looking for something aren't going to waste their time on rating search results, and it's not going to work because of spammers."

    A month after we implemented it, Google came out with the same thing. At first, the boss' reaction was "See how good an idea it was?" Of course, the idea turned out to be a turkey ("McDonalds food tastes like shit" was one of the first comments for mcdonalds.com).

    It's still a shitty idea.