HuddleChat Has Been Taken Down

[danielrhammond]

A visit to http://www.huddlechat.com/ grants the following message:

Hi, a couple of our colleagues wrote Huddle Chat in their spare time as a sample application for other developers to demonstrate the power and flexibility of Google App Engine. We've heard some complaints from the developer community about it and because of that we've decided to take it down. If you'd like to see more sample applications written on Google App Engine please check out our documentation and our App Gallery.

Thanks, The Google App Engine Team

Seems they did not want to deal with the criticism over the similiarities between it and campfire (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/huddlechat_campfire_rip.php)

[jcbozonier]

It's funny how I don't hear anyone saying, wow how cool, they listened and tried their best to respect 37signals. All this was was a few engineers trying to make something cool really quick just to show what you can do with AppEngine. Google, probably thought it was cool too and decided to showcase it.

This was really blown out of proportion. If anyone wants to perpetuate conspiracy theories you've got plenty of ammo with AppEngine. This HubbleChat thing is/was nothing. Cope.

[axod]

IMHO Google lost a lot of credibility by taking it down. For me, it's like Janet Jackson apologizing on national TV for showing some boob.

In any event Google has proved the point - it is ridiculously simple to clone webapps like campfire.

[raganwald]

wow how cool, they listened

[cheapRoc]

37signals are such stuck up, elitist, preppy twats... They should eat their own words and compete.

http://tinyurl.com/65my4q

This was just a demo app for a framework in a completely different language. I don't think it was a huge threat, I mean come on, they didn't invent online chatrooms. They just invented a doll house, my Mom can play with, that looks like a watered down IRC (for $$$).

The main reason they sell Campfire is for the integration with their other apps... something I doubt the Google App Engine Team managed to add to their clone.

[subwindow]

I don't recall the 37signals people ever complaining. There are oodles of Basecamp competitors out there, and I honestly don't think they mind the competition/copycats.

They are really very humble about competition, in general.

[bootload]

"... Seems they did not want to deal with the criticism over the similiarities between it and campfire ..."

Maybe.

If you look at the amount of press proclaiming you can "re-create" a 37sigs app using googles new toolkit. Then you might say it's a clever "social media hack" to make the dev community to take notice. There is an alternative to ROR and it scales. And we told you by example. We got our point across using code not blogs!

[Husafan]

"And we were always far ahead of them in features. Sometimes, in desperation, competitors would try to introduce features that we didn't have. But with Lisp our development cycle was so fast that we could sometimes duplicate a new feature within a day or two of a competitor announcing it in a press release. By the time journalists covering the press release got round to calling us, we would have the new feature too.

It must have seemed to our competitors that we had some kind of secret weapon--" -PG

It's up to 37Signals to find the new features; it is not up to competitors to stop competing.

[m0nty]

FFS, way to stifle competition, 37sig. I liked the look of HuddleChat way, way more than Campfire, and had started using it. So someone starts a brush-fire in teh blogosphere and we're all supposed to just give up and go away? I thought we'd gotten beyond all this "look and feel" BS years ago.

[anewaccountname]

This whole thing reminds me of when FOX News started forcing everyone to wear American Flag pins. Way to go, 37signals

[anewaccountname]

I don't know if a company can be considered a baby, but, if so, 37Signals can safely add another notch their belt of "Biggest [something]" awards.

[tfinniga]

Bummer. I tried huddlechat today, and was impressed. I hadn't tried campfire before, for various reasons, but I think I might give it a shot now.

At this point it might be just as effective of a tech demo to release the source to huddlechat, although the chances of it happening are quite low.

[axod]

Take a look at http://www.mibbit.com if you're interested in more of a feature-rich webchat.

[petercooper]

Can't blame them really. It's not worth risking the wrath of the Internet crazies for the sake of doing a single cool tech demo. They made their point already, and they're not going to win an argument against a bunch of zealots.

[simplegeek]

Well, it's nice of Google that they've taken this down. But I'm really annoyed by 37signals' reply. I mean I recently developed the similar app to learn a particular framework so if I go market this product do you guys really think I should be taking this down if I see DHH or JF complaining how I ripped their app off? I mean a 100% similar app will cetainly be a dissaopinting effort (for both them and I) but I can always improve on that(improved/diff UI, new features and etc). Moreover, I can point anyone to couple of BaseCamp and Campfire clones and HuddleChat was just an example for app_engine (not a stupidly easy thing to implement like Basecamp and not a technicaly very challenging project). Just the right balance for a good tutorial. I was looking forward to read how did they do it using app_engine ;(

[wallflower]

Such a small team (37signals) manages to generate lots of buzz, sometimes I'm not sure if it's signal or noise.

[mynameishere]

Are they going to take down google docs next?

[axod]

Don't forget gmail. It has a list of messages on the right, list of folders/tags on the left!!! blatent copy of other email clients.

[dcurtis]

No, it's evil to steal from companies smaller than you, but admirable to steal from companies bigger than you.

[wumi]

i think this spells out how a lot of people have great disdain for 37 signals and their perceived growing arrogance, more so than it is about Google Apps.

[wenbert]

i was able to use HuddleChat for a few minutes -- a very cool application. so sad that Google took it down :(

[edw519]

I don't understand the particulars of this case, but in general:

There are 2 sets of hackers: those whose intellectual property has been stolen and those whose intellectual property will be stolen.

The former group thinks it's a big deal. The latter group doesn't (yet).

[pmorici]

But in this case the "intellectual property" seems to be

1.chat in a web browser

2.web pages with a 2 column design.

Neither of which are unique or patentable ideas. Seems like 37signals just exploited this for publicity. Unless there was some innovation here that I'm missing.

[alex_c]

I would suggest there's a third set, who sits around on Slashdot and argues that "intellectual property" is a misnomer and therefore cannot be "stolen".

[bhiggins]

37signals ripped off IRC.

story at 11.

[icky]

Naw, they just took over some channels during a netsplit...

[ajkirwin]

I'm tempted to try and create something now, over this.

Infact, I even have my own, very special Campfire-inspired design, which is over at http://www.basementcoder.com/ravings/12

But then, maybe people might say mean things about ME too. :(

[orsoihaveread]

Knock, knock... Pansygram.

[webology]

If this came from Microsoft then everyone would bitch but no one would think twice about it. Google tries to be at a class above everyone else down to their company motto of "Do no Evil". Whether it was a few guys working off the clock or using their 20% time at work it was still Google that released it.

Don't get me wrong, I do think Google has a right to release competing products and they have done so with Gmail and many other apps. However, it's a very crappy message to send would-be developers to "trust" them to do the right thing. Let's not lose perspective just because you may or may not like the 37 Signals guys, it was a pretty crappy message to chance sending.

[halo]

I think that's nonsense, and think the exact opposite - if someone else other than Google had come out with this no-one would have given a damn and it would have received little to no press. It's only because Google is a big company - in itself this isn't news at all.

A browser-based chat client is a hardly spectacularly original idea, and 37signal's Campfire itself owes much to IRC, a protocol invented some 20 years ago and pretty much every IRC client has an extremely similar "look and feel" to Campfire anyway. I'm also very surprised no-one has created a free alternative to Campfire before - it seems like a painfully obvious thing to create and quite a small project.

And if it came from MS, I doubt anyone would have cared either - certainly no more than Google. Did anyone bitch when Microsoft largely recreated Java with .NET? Did anyone really care when Microsoft brought out Live.com strongly inspired by Google? Did anyone care when they brought out MSN Messenger, inspired by AIM and ICQ? What about taking on Flash (a JavaScript-based in-browser environment) with Silverlight (a JavaScript-based in-browser environment)? All those things are much more shameless than a JavaScript chat client.