Google Buzz vs. Brightkite (look familiar?) | Hacker News Reader

Google Buzz vs. Brightkite (look familiar?)

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23 pointsandrewhyde13 comments

There are only so many ways to do a 350x250 UI that contains text, a location, and a public/private toggle.

That is absolutely untrue. It's pretty clear that Buzz was inspired by Brightkite. I'm not going to pass judgement on the similarity, but the inspiration is clear.

> That is absolutely untrue.

How come? Given that every UI element on the iPhone is standard. Apps having similar functionalities are bound to look alike.

It's not a native app either, it's a web app that doesn't have standard controls. They could design it however they wanted as long as they could build it in HTML.

That being said, the Google Buzz app is just using the same UI library that Google has developed for all their other mobile offers (Gmail, Calendar, GTalk, etc.).

I think you have two things:

1. Google developed their library of UI elements that looks a lot like the iPhone ones.

2. Using that library, they made a new interface for Buzz. It does look very similar to Brightkite's, but only the location part can be really argued as "inspired", the rest is pretty standard indeed.

The "location" element that shows the bakery info ("X" on the left, text, then ">" on the right) is non-standard and seems pretty blatantly... "inspired".

Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that.

Only one of those screenshots is from the iPhone.

Might have been inspired indeed. I doubt it's a large issue though if the code for each is unique. If the code were not unique then I'd be offended.

I'll post here the same thing I posted there (only with more characters, damn Twitter response mechanism)...

Yes, it looks similar, but y'know what it looks MORE like? EVERY other mobile google app. If you compare it to Gmail on Android, it's damn near identical. I haven't followed it long enough to know when the current mobile gmail was launched versus Brightkite, but honestly, if there was 'design inspiration', it wasn't done in this app.

Google: Wait.. Don't Be Evil. Naw we'll just steal it.

That's like saying Toyota steals from Ford because it puts four tires on its cars in roughly the same position. Sometimes design happens just because it makes sense. I see no theft here.

That argument would be the same as both have buttons they must be the same.

We are not talking about elements that make up the design. We are talking about how these elements were set on the screen. Same buttons in the EXACT same places. Almost the exact same wording, same functionality. Same thing.

Google owns a patent on its home page design. Why is it ok for them to patent that then make a design that is so blatantly like another site and expect it to be ok?

If you decompose the interface we see in the screenshot, it's difficult to make a strong case for theft. Maybe they were inspired, but it's hard to call the Brightkite interface innovative.

At the top you have the navigation bar with Cancel on the left, "Post" on the right. Very standard given the iPhone's UI (again, Google is using a library they developed for mobile products that reproduces the iPhone UI, though it is a webapp).

Below that you have the place to type your status. There isn't many ways to do that.

Then comes what is, to me, the only arguable point: the location part. But again, it's not very far off from what other things Google has done in other mobile products. Plus, keeping in mind how the iPhone UI works, there isn't that many ways to do it: you can't go to the left to see more options, so the arrow goes to the right. You could put the cross on the right too, but it can get error-prone. (and the iPhone UI puts the delete button on the left too)

Finally, you have the toggle Public/Private. It makes sense to have it after you type your message, so at the bottom. And in terms of design, same thing: standard iPhone UI.

I think the issue is that they have the same functionality. And it's not super complicated functionality. Given the fact that they use a similar UI library, you end up with similar designs.

(NB: you're saying they have similar wording, but that's disingenuous: you have Cancel/Cancel, Post/Post, Public/Everyone, Private/Friends. Difficult to pick widely different words for such similar meanings)

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