Startup Claims Google Copied Web-Annotation Product

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."

Comments

Comparison shots didn't persuade me

[bonch]

I was expecting some damning evidence from the comparison shots, but it just looks like Google made their own implementation of the same features. Copying features happens, and it's not illegal.

Re:Comparison shots didn't persuade me

[tomhudson]

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.

in all honesty.....

[phantomfive]

They may have copied it. But it wouldn't be the first time. A dirty, dark secret of Google's is that their main product, a search engine was a copy of AltaVista, which also had the dirty secret of being a copy of Aliweb.

And if you look at it, Toyota's share a lot of the major functionality of Fords. They all have a round steering wheel, for example; do you think they came up with that by accident, or do you think they were looking at other cars? They may have even had Fords available at the Toyota design offices in Japan.

Seriously, if you have a small idea that takes a small team less than six months to create, then you better have a really good marketing, a good implementation and sharp execution, otherwise some big company is going to do the same thing and win because they have better visibility and more resources.

Re:in all honesty.....

[phantomfive]

For every one that succeeded in rising there are 1000 more who were just as talented and hard working who didn't make it.

I doubt it, why do you think that? It's rare that I've met people who worked hard in a directed way without becoming quite successful. There are too many ways to succeed in this life for your ratio of 1 to 1000 to actually be true.

On the other hand, I've met plenty of people who thought that they had worked hard, then given up, and told themselves that it was impossible and stopped trying. I've never met one of them that actually achieved success.

Occasionally you will find someone who was talented, and worked hard, and expected the world to be dropped in his lap. This type of person is almost always disappointed. Success rarely will come to you; it's something you have to go and take.

Re:in all honesty.....

[NoYob]

A dirty, dark secret of Google's is that their main product, a search engine was a copy of AltaVista, which also had the dirty secret of being a copy of Aliweb.

It's software. When you have the same problem, you're going to solve in a very similar manner. Unless the algorithms are the same, having the functionality being the same isn't copying. Linux is a copy of Unix but the underlying code is completely different.

Re:in all honesty.....

[phantomfive]

Spoken like someone who has no idea how the world works. Success doesn't come to you like the lottery......people who win the lottery tend to lose it again quickly. It isn't about connections....who is going to help out a 'connection' who has nothing to give in return? Of course nobody wants to help them, those people are leaches.

We don't live in a 19th century Marxist oppression society anymore. We live in a land of freedom, where if you create things people value, you can get paid for it. In general the more value you create, the more you will get paid.

Of course, there are some tricksters who manage to get paid more than they are worth, but you will see these on all levels of society, from the poor to the rich. In fact, some of your coworkers are probably like that right now.

Yes, but is it illegal?

[noundi]

I don't understand. TFA mentions nothing about any legal issues. Unless there's any patent infringement or trademark issues I don't see why this should be frowned upon. I don't care if Reframe is a small struggling company, as a consumer I want as many companies tearing eachother apart at the same time -- providing me with better services and lower prices. This is exactly the kind of nonsense that hinders development, and no the product might be very similar but it is not an exact copy, and even if it was I would never side with the people whom I do business with -- as that would be completely idiotic. I'm not even going to bother with the car analogies as you all know how silly this type of reasoning would be if it was applied there. What's next? Are we going to point fingers at Mozilla for not inventing the concept of the browser?

Re:Yes, but is it illegal?

[stephanruby]

This is so ridiculous. They say they founded their company in 2006. They only registered their domain in 2007. Their patent filing is so fresh, it still says "patent pending".

Personally, I've been making tools like this one since 2001 (and I know I wasn't the only one at the time). Mind you at the time, I didn't have the Twitter/Facebook share buttons (but now, everybody has those -- so it's not like they have anything unique). Besides, the guy complains about the Twitter and the Facebook buttons they both have in common, but if you look closely, you'll see that reframe has five select boxes, and Google has four buttons, and not only is Google only using buttons (instead of checkboxes) -- it has two share buttons that reframe doesn't even have (and it's missing three options that reframeit has).

And don't get me started on those screenshots, they're way too small to read fully (even if you do view image). And the first three screenshots have the same complaint duplicated (so aside from the arrows, I'm guessing that we're missing two of his complaints).

And then, look at what he ends his blog post with.

In any case, pairing a Web annotation service with the leading search engine puts Google at the head of the Web annotation long tail, of which Reframe It, Diigo, JotSpot and others are a part.

Excuse-me!? I've never heard of Reframeit.com. Does he have third party citations to back up his claims? Traffic stats? User reviews? Anything? Personally, I have, and reframeit doesn't even make it in the top ten.

And what about jotspot.com? Weren't they bought out by Google two or three years ago. Shouldn't this guy know this if he's in the space? Besides, it's not like jotspot would even qualify as a good web annotation tool, it was way too feature-rich to be in that category the last time I saw it.

Evidence?

[RichardDeVries]

[...] 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.

The article doesn't have any evidence. Low-res screenshots with a few arrows aren't convincing, even if they did look alike. If you're writing an online annotation solution, it's quite probable it will look something like your competitor's product (and like a few other things in sidebars).
As for the user registrations: if none of the Reframe It employees have registered with Google to check out Sidewiki, they're stupid.
Trying to hire off a lead engineer? I'd consider that a compliment, for the engineer as well as for the company. And he refused, didn't he?
Furthermore, the article states clearly that the Reframe It CEO "doesn't want to sue Google," but rather, "By going public, Fishkin is hoping to get his story out there and see what happens next." The whining, cowardly 'see what sticks' - approach to competitiveness.

Oh, oh, I know this one!

[Das Auge]

All I have to go on are are quotes like "suspicious user registrations by Google employees" and two browser-based applications that have a similar goal and layout. But Google is the big guy and the startup is the little guy. So...Google is evil. I have barely anything that resembles a fact, but I know the truth of it!

WTF does "suspicious user registrations by Google employees" supposed to mean? Google has over 22,000 full-time employees (who knows how many part-time). I'm willing to bet that a decent percentage of them are web savvy because...well..that's what they do. Also, how do they know that certain registrations are Google employees? Probably because they users' email was @google.com. So, let's see if I have this straight, Google decided to steal this startups (fairly obvious) idea and couldn't be bothered to at least hide it by using gmail.com and not google.com? Or maybe Yahoo! or Hotmail. Right...

As for the interface. I did RTFA and they mentioned (with picture in a link) that both apps have the same general set of buttons and similarities in their interface. It's a freakin' application that does one simple thing, it annotates web pages It's not an application that say, allows you to edit 3D objects and has a bajillion buttons (witness Blender). That's a couple of buttons and a couple of textboxes. Oh, and as to how the button arrangements are similar: the cancel button and the submit buttons are side-by-side, with the cancel on the left. Someone call the police! That's a smokin' gun right there!

I'm not saying that Google didn't steal this app, but everything so far is circumstantial at best.

Re:Oh, oh, I know this one!

[leenks]

WTF does "suspicious user registrations by Google employees" supposed to mean? Google has over 22,000 full-time employees (who knows how many part-time). I'm willing to bet that a decent percentage of them are web savvy because...well..that's what they do.

Exactly. If Google employees were not registering for all sorts of new services I'd almost be concerned!

Also, how do they know that certain registrations are Google employees? Probably because they users' email was @google.com. So, let's see if I have this straight, Google decided to steal this startups (fairly obvious) idea and couldn't be bothered to at least hide it by using gmail.com and not google.com? Or maybe Yahoo! or Hotmail. Right...

Why do they need to hide it? I'd be expecting Google employees to be checking out the competition all the time. You cannot patent an idea, so I can't see quite where the problem is. This is one idea why getting startup funding for stuff that is obvious or easy to copy is so hard!

Re:Oh, oh, I know this one!

[Blakey Rat]

Address Line 1: "I am a Google employee"
Address Line 2: "And I'm going to steal the shit out of this app!"
ZIP Code: "LOLOL"

Re:From the end of the article

[tomhudson]

And it's not original. Other people have tired to launch similar products since 1999.

Here's a few of them:

http://www.icomment.com/
http://www.purplebunny.com/bbs/index5.php
joeblowanswers.com

Fishkin is an idiot for taking this approach without doing proper research. There's nothing they can sue google for.

There's nothing new in this

[laddiebuck]

Seriously. I'm not the brightest spark in the wire, but I had an idea for this 10 years ago, and even an implementation limited to a small online fan community. It never took off because the community essentially imploded and died. It used some clever JavaScript, that's about all I remember about it. These people have nothing to complain about, this idea has probably been considered by thousands and their implementation just happened to come second in the contest.

RTFA indeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Following TFA and you'll eventually find this comment, apparently by Reframe It's CEO..

Thank you kindly for sharing your thoughts and for letting your readers decide if Side Wiki looked to Reframe It as an example to follow when they entered the market. We're flattered by the similarities to our pre-existing product from 2008. We're exhilarated by the challenge presented by Google to work even harder, and we expect our forthcoming release of our technology to knock the socks off of anything in the space. Bobby Fishkin CEO of reframeit.com

source Umm.. he doesn't seem to be considering any sort of legal action to me.

Where's the mode for

[Nursie]

+1, inspiringly naive

It would be nice to live in your world.