socialmedian: Did Google Steal Sidewiki From a Startup?

User-submitted headlines for this story

Clips

Did Google Steal Sidewiki From a Startup?

Source: ReadWriteWeb

Nov 09, 2009

Summary

Web annotation is a sexy and increasingly crowded space in the market. As in any such pool, the amount of elbow-rubbing between individuals and similarity between products can lead to suspicion of theft.

Annotation startup Reframe It, a 14-person team, claims that Google's hot new product Sidewiki crosses the line between competitive innovation and IP infringement. And with a few Googlers caught with their hands in Reframe It's cookie jar, there might be some validity to this claim.

Sponsor

We first came across Reframe It about a year ago when it first launched. The company's product allowed users to "can basically write comments into the margins of the Internet" and was in heavy competition with services such as Diigo and SocialBrowse. When it added Twitter and Facebook integration and received an official nod from Mozilla this past spring, Diigo remained as a serious competitor, but Reframe It had the further advantage of a stellar advisory board.

Fast-forwarding to this fall, Google launched Sidewiki in September, almost a full year after the debut of Reframe

...Read the full article

Comments (1)

Girlintheforest,

Nov 09, 2009

As far as I'm concerned, Sidewiki is a major liability to webmasters, website visitors, and humans in general. Most people don't know what a browser is. If they see something written "next to" a website it looks like it is part of that website.

In essence, anyone can now write anything on anyone else's website, on any page. And the moderation is not even in control of the webmaster. Someone could go to a drug website and add recommendations for off-label uses or overdoses and get people killed when those people think that Sidewiki is part of a trusted website. Not to mention a million other ramifications. Anyone could add their own download links to competing sales pages. Then, there is blackmail potential galore. If you don't ___ I will add comments to your website's sidewiki to expose ____ and include data on where people can find the evidence.

If this doesn't bring on lawsuits, trouble, and all sorts of disgusting "side effects" I don't know what will. I only hope Google comes to its senses sooner rather than later and removes this thing.