The launch of Google's App Engine Web software platform was initially greeted with something close to rapture. But the warm glow faded quickly when the company was accused of copying a rival's application.

App Engine, a set of free tools that allows software developers to build applications on Google's infrastructure, is supposed to be the next step in the company's campaign to move computing from desktops to the internet.

But a program the company is using to showcase the new platform—a group instant-messaging service called HuddleChat—bears a striking resemblance to Campfire, a program that runs on Amazon's competing software platform.

The resemblance is so striking, in fact, that the founder of the company that makes Campfire is crying foul.

"We're flattered Google thinks Campfire is a great product, we're just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically copy it feature for feature, layout for layout," 37Signals founder Jason Fried said in an email received by ReadWriteWeb.com. "We thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe it's time to reevaluate what they stand for."

ReadWriteWeb's Josh Catone notes that "37Signals is supported by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who invested in the company in July 2006, and the Chicago-based company's Web applications all run on Amazon's Web-services platform."

It's also worth noting that the two programs are basic group-chat clients—simple pieces of software that bear fundamental similarities in the way that, say, instant-messaging services bear fundamental similarities.

Google itself initially downplayed any similarities to Campfire. "Like the other sample applications in the Google App Engine gallery, HuddleChat was written by several Googlers as a side project to demonstrate the usefulness of Google App Engine," a company spokesman said.

But John Gruber, who blogs at DaringFireball.net, says the similarities run suspiciously deep.

"The layout is the same, the tabs at the top of the screen are the same, the right-side sidebar listing participants and file uploads is the same," he says. "It even copies Campfire's trick of formatting a message as code if it contains literal newline characters."

Newline characters are code signifying the end of a line of text.

Google's apparent misfire with HuddleChat marred what was shaping up to be a blockbuster announcement, coming just weeks before Google reports earnings. (App Engine has been garnering very positive early reviews.)

The flap also hints at the worrisome implications of App Engine. While the idea of a free set of tools based on Google technology may sound appealing to software developers, some people worry that it could also permit Google to become the Microsoft of the internet—the dominant, de facto software developer environment.

Marhsall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb is among the bloggers asking if that's such a good thing.

"Google's dominance of online advertising is so severe, and the umbrella for innovators that such dominance affords is so large, that it can't help but raise concerns about a single corporate allegiance running between so many development teams in leadership positions in the Web 2.0 economy," Kirkpatrick wrote today.

In fact, creating a uniform standard for Web-based software developers is precisely Google's strategy: If successful, App Engine could spawn hundreds if not thousands of applications and startups that would be built on Google's infrastructure.

Google, which is sitting on a $15 billion cash hoard, could then snap up the most promising startups, which would already be compatible with Google's systems.

Such concerns moved from fringe to center stage among bloggers as rumors spread that Google had ripped off—or appeared to rip off—another company's program to showcase its new platform. Such behavior, some archly note, is reminiscent of another giant technology company up in Washington.

"Borrowing ideas is fair game, but copying an entire app is wrong," wrote Gruber, the DaringFireball blogger. "And it's creepy, in a Microsoft-of-the-'90s way, when it's a $150 billion company cloning an app from a 10-person company."