Second Suicide as Google drops bomb on Lively avatars

Davey Winder
Saturday, 22 November 2008 16:19

Business IT - Networking

When Google launched a real time interactive 3D avatar world called Lively it promised the ability to express yourself in a more fun way. So why is it now dropping a bomb on Lively users by committing Second Suicide?

Back in July, when news of the Google Lively launch reached us here at iTWire, we said that the immersive 3D world populated by avatars in which you could create your own space to chat sounded a lot like Second Life.

In fact, we went as far a to call it a 'me too avatar world' which it really very much was. Not just Second Life but with shades of There.com and IMVU thrown in.

The idea of Google entering this space, albeit in the form of a 3D environment that you do not go visit but rather embed within your blog or website, struck us as slightly barmy given the competition.

Google were not to be put off, and insisted that "the Lively team wants to help people experience another dimension of the web" but the reality was very different. The freedom to explore an immersive 3D virtual world such as Second Life was missing.

Interaction was pretty much limited to a handful of pre-determined animated avatar actions. Lively was far from it, and would have been better off being called Google Boring to be honest.

Now Google seems to have caught on and has announced that "Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams."

It says that it believes in creating "groundbreaking products that make a difference to people's lives" which is great, and if Google Labs had done that with Lively it might still be alive after Xmas.

The official reason for the closure is that "we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business" but anyone who has used Google Boring will know the truth.

Google says it now encourages "all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms" but to be honest, you might want to spend your time doing something sa little more exciting...

I am not expecting any virtual avatar parties to see it off.