HuddleChat: Did Google Just Rip Off 37Signals?
Blogs are abuzz this morning about HuddleChat, a real-time chat application that a team of three Google developers created to show off Google's new App Engine platform. The chat software bears a striking resemblance to the popular Campfire app from 37Signals. On blogs (here and here, too), on Twitter, and even on the HuddleChat App Engine gallery page people are ripping into Google for allegedly copying the application's design and feature set. 37Signal's founder Jason Fried told us by email that he was "disappointed" in Google. So what's going on here?
HuddleChat was created by Google developers Darren Delaye, Braden Kowitz, and Kyle Consalus in their spare time to test out App Engine. Though upon signing in, it displays the standard App Engine disclaimer that Google is "not affiliated" with the app, it is clearly being endorsed by the company, which features it in their App Engine gallery.
"We're flattered Google thinks Campfire is a great product, we're just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically copy it feature for feature, layout for layout," said 37Signals founder Jason Fried by email. "We thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe its time to reevaluate what they stand for." We sought comment from Kyle Consalus via the official HuddleChat support room, but received no response other than confirmation that he, Delaye, and Kowitz are Googlers.
This is not the first time that an application has taken design cues from 37Signals. Many early Ruby on Rails applications end up looking similar to 37Signals' own creations (HuddleChat was built in Python), such as forum software Beast, which borrowed what it calls the "sheet of paper" design from 37Signals. But this goes beyond design inspiration, Jason Fried told us.
Another interesting wrinkle to this story: 37Signals is supported by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who invested in the company in July 2006, and the Chicago-based company's web apps all run on Amazon's web services platform, a competitor in many respects to Google App Engine. Could it be that Google purposely chose to clone one of Amazon web services' greatest success stories specifically to show off the power for their new platform? Perhaps it wasn't a coincidence that Google unveiled App Engine at an event it called Campfire ...
Let us know your thoughts on the controversy in the comments below.
UPDATE: Google Takes Down HuddleChat After Complaints About 37Signals Ripoff
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37signals can cry foul, but they're discovering the downside of making products with low barriers to entry. And really, if you want to make a group chat application, are there many other viable design alternatives?
I'm not convinced you can call 37S Campfire product "designed"... what's next... accusing someone of ripping off Dave Winers website design??
There are only so many ways a chat application can look without going overboard and being disrespectful to the DOM... both companies took the "less is more" approach and, surprise surprise, they look similar... go figure. If 37 Signals want to accuse and be offended then they better start "designing" with some substance... all their stuff is damn near default looking... I dont take 37 Signals side on this one... not even close. They're just happy that people are noticing their product again (too bad it's being thrust along side something that took a few days (collectively) by 3 people to throw together as an example of google tech... lol... talk about being served up on a silver plate. 37 signals = pwned.)
How sad.
Both of them look like I'd expect a simple browser based IM client to look.
What is 37Signals whining about?
Box where you type. Check. Box where text appears. Check. Listing of people in the same channel. Check. Some tabs along the top. Check. That's how chat pages are developed and pretty much how they universally look and work.
If 37signals are actually complaining about this, that's just their clever way to get more PR by attaching on to a Google announcement. So, kudos to them for trying, but shame on blogs and media that started this non-story in the first place. What next? Complaining about blogs that have a sidebar on the right, a logo at the top left, and some Adsense on the page? They're called design patterns and they're not unique.
Agreed with all the other comments. There's not exactly much to copy there.
And anyway, 37Signals have presumably made a fair amount of money from Campfire already, so the fact that google comes in and does the same for free is hardly a tragedy that will leave them penniless.
All products have a limited life. Simple products have an even shorter life.
Daniel
I think 37Signals is worried they will lose cash from Campfire. Google Talk has Group chat feature and they are extending this, what is the big deal they are making it easy for companies to have this feature instead of giving ridiculous money to 37signals every month. It is not like they invented this product.
Imitation is the sincerest..nah...they copied it. Something is beneath Google? Or was it just easy to copy with the right technology? Is anything beneath 37 signals? They are one successful operation.
Wow. Things are going to get interesting.
Yes, it looks like the stripped down, less features strategy is coming back to haunt Jason.
Oh get off it, 37signals. Do you honestly think you invented (and own) the concept of group chat?
I agree with the other comments here, it's a such a plain layout that it's not really copying. It's like all blogs that have a header, main content, and sidebar for ads. Did RRW rip off Techcrunch's blog layout?
37 Signals is a bunch of whiners.
37Signals, Google:
mIRC called, it wants you to stop copying it.
To me, both Campfire and Google's application look a great deal like IRC. I think the standard was set for group chat long before Campfire launched and both this and Google's application have chosen to follow the same paths.
Not to mention that Google ripped off the UK collaboration company www.huddle.net !!!
Wow...it looks like the readershpere is at odds with the blogosphere on this one.
37 = whiny children.
Google = popular target.
Blogosphere = ass over foot about this silly thing.
I think one simple fact remains (and makes 37 signals look really bad): 37 Signals designed an enterprise product, developed it in who knows how long and charge way too much for it... Google had a few developers whip up something in their free time that they give away for free as a simple example of what their emerging technology is capable of supporting. That devalues the hell out of 37 signals... i'm sure the fact that Google's event was called "CAMPFIRE one" might lend to 37 Signals nervousness as well. lol. oh well...)
Josh,
I feel like the first comment pretty much nailed it. This is something that many companies in the Web 2.0 world are going to run up against. When building out products with very low barriers to entry, unless there is a big network effect that locks people in to the system, companies will have to get creative with their sales, marketing, and product strategy. If the value of their product is so low that a couple of guys at Google can just slap it together on top of the free AppEngine, it's time for them to start taking advantage of the harder to duplicate asset they have - their customer base - and start innovating in ways that only they know based on real-world usage of the product and feedback. And they can use savvy marketing tricks like associating themselves with the currently most talked about technology story!
Itsssssssss aaaaaaaaaa chaaaaaaatttttttttt roooooooom.
http://collegemogul.com
Remember back when you used to admire 37signals? (We all did at one point, right?)
And yet now so many of us got sick and tired of their whining and poor attitude?
I can't say that their product design skills have waned, but certainly they've managed to really turn people's opinion on them.
It's too bad, though we have yet to see if their demeanor will have any effect on the success of their business model.
Seriously 37signals, stop btching.
How else would you design a chat web app? Even 37signals campfire design is *not* new.
Neither of them are exactly feature rich are they :/
Perhaps if campfire had spent more time implementing useful features, they wouldn't be so simple to copy.
OMG!? *shocked* someone wrote a CHAT application to highlight the features of an cloud based application hosting platform!!!!! How dare they copy the 500 similar example applications written for every other modern programming environment!!
What next, are they going to rip off that HelloWorld that Java has !!!
*Angry*
WhoCares
Google has become the new Microsoft right under everyone's noses, but the foosball tables, in-house masseuses, and free food make them look friendly. They gave up don't be evil a long time ago, but have been able to kick back and rest on the positive image.
I'd also like to point out that others noticed the similarities long before 37signals did, and I assume the comments were in response to bloggers asking them what they thought. I don't blame them for an honest response, but it's not like they ran out and lawyered up, which Google would surely have done if the situation was reversed.
Please, this is no story. You don't hear Amazon crying about how GAE copies its services. Anyone can write a campfire clone, there is an open source alternative to their basecamp, etc etc. Do you even know how many free variants of basecamp are out there or is this just an issue because Google did it. Hey let me make a basecamp clone on Heroku.com and see if I can get my 15 mins of fame.
From the Zoho.com Blog, A proper response to the situation:
http://blogs.zoho.com/uncategorized/ning-10-was-too-early/
"Here is my reaction to AppEngine: I asked our engineers to brush up on their Python. Fortunately, we have experience in it - a lot of our test automation scripts are Python based. I think AppEngine is going to be monstrously successful. And we at Zoho are going to embrace it whereever we can, just as we are already playing with Amazon AWS.
Fundamentally, we are a software company. We don’t compete against Google because of our infrastructure advantage over them, that’s for sure. Initiatives like Amazon AWS and Google AppEngine let us be a software company again - and that is a good thing! So here we come, Python … and to Ning, here is someone who remembered your original innovation. Thank you!"
Regardless of whether it is a copy or not, you don't hear microsoft complaining about openoffice do you? What about other proprietary software vs its open source clone?
It's inevitable neo
Both look like an IRC client from the early 90s to me...
Can someone PLEASE link to a post from 37Signals that whines about this? I've seen other people say they look alike. I have yet to see 37S say it does. What did I miss?
alright.. I'm really really dumb
sorry for that
As one of the App Engine product managers, I wanted to give an update -- we've now taken HuddleChat down from the App Engine app gallery. 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.
Thanks,
Pete Koomen
Product Manager, Google App Engine Team
Wow! That was quick - they took it down!!!!
Dear Blogosphere,
Please dial 1-800-waa-waaa
It's called competition.
I'm sure now all the hipster web 2.0 guys are thinking "Forget copyleft, I wish I had patented something"
I normally love 37s but this is ridiculous. "Less Design" means something is going to look pretty similar :)
Now we know the truth. Jason Fried, not Al Gore, invented the Internet. Google only invented the mouse. And Microsoft invented the desktop metaphor. But Jimmy Carter invented chicken sh*t.
Looks like Huddlechat has been taken down: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158488
I thought it was funny/weird that Google announced the App Engine at something called a "Campfire".
Why don't they eat their own words and compete?
http://tinyurl.com/65my4q
Those metro's over at 37signals just got themselves some nice free publicity didn't they?
Look at the latest blog in 37Signals. They have added features in almost all their products. When they initially launched Basecamp or backpack, users cry for features but they just lecture them on "Less is More". I have heard that many times when I request for features.
What happened to the "Less is More" bullshit today?
Why are they continuously adding more features to existing products?
Why can't they just keep building new products as they did after releasing Basecamp with just 2.5 developers ?
The simple reason is COMPETITION. If GMail never came, Yahoo will enjoy having a limitation of 6MB / mail account & charge for extra storage in Mail. They wouldn't have changed their mail interface. They did only after Google released GMail.
37Signals hate competition as it forces them to work harder & think harder.
I'm on my way out the door and didn't have time to read all of the comments but I hope at least some of them agree this is ridiculous. I'm a PHP programmer and if you put a gun to my head and made me program a chat room from scratch using no visual or written references, I can promise you it would look pretty much exactly like both Campfire and HuddleChat, because THAT IS WHAT PRACTICALLY EVERY SINGLE CHAT ROOM IN THE UNIVERSE LOOKS LIKE! Geez.
Here you go, another group chat about to launch./ Also built on RoR. www.deskcafe.com It certainly is more than a 3 day job.
Enjoy
Jere
Breaking News:
MA from Techcrunch ripped off RWW's screenshot of HuddleChat and includes in his post about Huddlechat without attributing the image's source.
I am actually shocked. The same commenters on some of these tech blogs defend stealing music and yet slam Goog over cloning Campfire. How hypocritical is that?
We're about to launch our own group chat application at
www.deskcafe.com, which is also built on Ruby. Take a look !
Jere
Go back and look at your overview of Jason Fried's session at sxsw: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_lessons_learned_at_37signals.php
Lesson 9 was "learn from the chefs." His key point was that, just as the great chefs give their recipes away, software companies should not be afraid of sharing their expertise. I was in the session and he said (I'm paraphrasing): "Do you think they worry that someone else is going to open up a restaurant next to their restaurant, take their recipes and put them out of business? Of course not!"
His key points was that the risk of sharing is more than offset by the marketing and brand advantages you get by "giving it away." Sounds to me that he want all of the upside of giving it away without any of the downside. Lame.
I'm glad that you got Google to take it down. Who knows, innovation might have occurred. In fact, I'm telling Mozilla to remove this "Firefox" right now, they obviously stole the idea of displaying Web Pages from Microsoft Internet Explorer.
This is backfiring on you beautifully.
Also: John Gruber, you are scum.
His key points was that the risk of sharing is more than offset by the marketing and brand advantages you get by "giving it away." Sounds to me that he want all of the upside of giving it away without any of the downside. Lame.
There's nothing lame about it. We're selective about what we give away. You are too. It's our call with our stuff, your call with your stuff. You don't get to decide what you can take from us and we don't get to decide what we can take from you.
We choose what we want to give away. Like when we open sourced Rails. Or like when we put our book free online. Or when we publish stats on our blog that gives people insight into what it costs to run a web app. Or when we make Ta-da List or Writeboard entirely free. Or when Sam, who works for us, open sources the Prototype Javascript library he wrote.
But that doesn't mean anyone can take whatever they want because we give something else away. If that was the case, anything anyone does for charity would open up all their assets to anyone who wants anything. Anyone who helps someone once would have to help them forever. Any chef who shares one recipe would have to share all their recipes.
That would be an unreasonable burden for anyone to shoulder.
That is absolutely ridiculous. Huddlechat is built on Google Apps Engine; was Campfire? While they may look the same, the coding behind them is most likely totally different, making them totally different products. Who cares if they look and act the same. Last time I checked, the tires on my car look just like the tires on my neighbor's car, but they're made by different folks. I've got no problem with that. It's called competition.
Quit your whining!
37signals' chat looks a heck of a lot like AOL's old chat, and some IRC clients I've seen. There's only so much you can do with a chat room. I don't think the Goog developers did anything wrong.
really I'm with Jason. They've given a lot to the web dev community and never asked for anything (monetary) for those who use RoR . Remember, Google is now a behemoth most likely to destroy Microsoft in the near future but does that make it fair and OK to destroy all the other innovators too? We'd have riots on the streets if Microsoft created a tech demo using C# that duplicated facebook or Google Maps in 1 line of code (I kid, maybe 7 years and more lines of code than you can count on a 32 bit calculator.)
As 14 points out, a tool called Huddle (http://www.huddle.net) has already existed for well over a year and has trademarks registered all over the place. Poor research on Google's part. Whatever happened to "don't be evil" (and walk all over the little guy's brand)?
I'll have to "ditto" most comments here. 37Signals used to be "cool" but their brand has really been hurt (at least in my eyes) because of the way they talk about themselves. They are the Floyd Mayweather of software companies. Even though they may be the pound-for-pound champ everyone hates them because they are so cocky that it actually proves their insecurity about themselves.
Jason is typically their mouthpiece so perhaps it is his personal style thet rubs me the wrong way, but he nonetheless represents the entire company.
It's interesting to read these comments. Plenty of emotion. No shortage of opinion on this one.
You'd think we C&D'd Google, filed a multi-million dollar infringement lawsuit, published a scathing opinion piece on our blog, picketed their offices, held a damning press conference, launched a boycott, made a sobbing plea on TV for Google to pick on someone their own size, threatened them with flaming torches and hot pokers, and bullied them into submission! We did none of the above and nothing of the sort.
If anyone is curious, there has been no official communication between anyone at Google and anyone at 37signals. Nothing legal, nothing causal. Not an email, not a letter, not a phone call. Nothing. No group chats either.
We simply issued an official single 40-odd word statement to a reporter. We said we were disappointed that Google was behind a product that we -- and many people around the web -- felt was a functional and visual rip of Campfire. We thought it was beneath Google -- a sentiment shared by many others around the web who said they felt this behavior was below the high standards that Google set for itself. Whether or not you agree is of course up to you, but to suggest we're crying or whining or having a hissy fit or afraid of competition or claim to have invented group chat? That's out of left field in your own ballpark. Disappointment is not crying any more than being happy is having an orgasm.
Google didn't react to the few words I said, they reacted to the thousands of words other people said.
The posts and articles around the web suggesting that HuddleChat was a rip of Campfire weren't written by us. They were written by independent individuals -- developers, designers, business owners, journalists, observers -- who felt that Google went too far. These are other people's opinions. If you have a problem with their perspective, take it up with them. While I may agree with some of these folks, I can't speak for other people.
The truth, as it usually does, falls somewhere in between the distant edges of opinion. But apparently a critical mass of free people generated enough heat that Google took HuddleChat down. That was Google's choice and Google's choice alone. Their hand was not forced by us in any way. We've taken no action. Public opinion was the driver, not anything we said or did.
We thank those people who sympathized with us for their support. And we thank those people who didn't agree with us for speaking their mind. We learned a lot. Finally, we thank Google for listening and taking the action they thought was most appropriate.
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