Date: 04-14-2008
Google has announced the demise of Huddlechat, a real-time chat application, because of the striking similarity between the application and a similar service, Campfire, created by 37Signals LLC. “We’ve heard some complaints from the developer community about it and because of that we’ve decided to take it down,” Google said, although it didn’t reveal much about the whole affair. Web users continue to debate the incident, with many wanting Google to bring the service back. Jason Fried, founder of 37Signals, told ReadWriteWeb blog: “We’re flattered Google thinks Campfire is a great product, we’re just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically copy it feature by feature, layout by layout.”
