Google clones 37sig: "Borrowing ideas is fair game, but copying an entire app is wrong."

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.

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...

""" 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 """

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

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.

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".

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.

does anyone remember or is still using irc?