"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."

It's all a storm in a teacup, because this was just supposed to be a demo app. It was built internally at Google after all, and wasn't meant to be an official Google product that competed with 37Signals' Campfire. Techcrunch's Michael Arrington claims that "this is the first case of censorship on the new Google App Engine platform, and a bad precedent." That's probably going too far, as this was something that was built by Google employees and so I think Google has the right to pull it - if they feel that it reflects badly on them.

More than that though, I'd suggest that Google just doesn't want the latest blogtroversy to get out of hand (as these things are wont to do). But have they given it a second wind instead? ;-)

"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