

Google clones 37sig: "Borrowing ideas is fair game, but copying an entire app is wrong." - nickb
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/april#tue-08-huddlechat

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pg
It doesn't look as if Google did it in order to take 37signals' customers,
just to show off AE. At worst, the guys who built it were making a snarky
point about how easy it would be to knock off Campfire.

However, if that was their point, they didn't make it. There are a lot of
things that are easy to copy, but hard to design. Copying a page of
Shakespeare doesn't prove much about his skills or yours. The work was the
thought that went into it, not the physical writing.

So much for the theoretical point; as a practical matter, slavish copying
doesn't pay either. All you get is a snapshot of the thing you copied, without
the thought behind it.

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nirmal
I don't get the complaining. It's a sample to show the power of AE. It's not
as if Google has released HuddleChat on the level of Gmail or Google Maps.
Speaking of which, does anyone know if Yahoo or MS complained about design
copying when Gmail was released?

From the comments of the RWW post about this
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/huddlechat_campfire_rip...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/huddlechat_campfire_rip.php)

""" 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 """

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axod
I'd say if your entire app can be cloned in a day, it's fair game. Hardly
rocket science.

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antiismist
What about issues of design? Even if the individual features are easy, it is
hard to get the right mix and in the right spots.

As an analogy, is it OK to copy a font and call it your own?

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axod
Given the brief of "Make a webchat client", it's hard to come up with a
_different_ design that would work.

Like an email client, it has an obvious design that works.

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sanswork
Having looked at campfire it looks like just about every other webchat system
I have ever used going back to 2000. What is it exactly about the design that
sets them apart? All the elements are the exact same from what I can see.

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icky
It comes with free 37signals Kool-Aid, and man, is that good Kool-Aid...

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nuggien
37 signals: "let's make some simple apps that can be copied in a couple of
days, dumb down the design, then get our fanboys to cry foul when people
'copy' us".

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aristus
Hmm. It's brutal but not "wrong", by which I think the poster means "unfair &
anti-competitive".

The point of this platform is to make it easier to write applications. They
proved it by cloning the poster child for the last prod-hype-tivity platform,
RoR. Life goes on.

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gaika
Wrong in the sense that is not how you make your platform attractive to
developers. What happened to "do not be evil"?

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nilobject
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

~~~
kirubakaran
Some might prefer money over flattery :)

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annoyed
does anyone remember or is still using irc?

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pius
I use it just about every day. I've found it pretty crucial for working with
the bleeding edge trunk of certain open source libraries.

