Google Closes Not-So-Lively Virtual World

Logan Frederick

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Google Closes Not-So-Lively Virtual World



The short-lived Google Lively web world project will be closing down at the end of the year so the search giant can focus on its core projects.

Lasting a brief five months following a two-year development, Google's Lively online world is the latest victim of the economic troubles coming to the pioneering internet firm.

In an post on the official Google Blog [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/lively-no-more.html], Google solemnly states, "Despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we've decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year."

The move is mostly a survival tactic, allowing the company to "prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business."

Kevin Hanna, the creative director on the project, and Mel Guymon, its operations director, hoped Lively would successfully integrate the web browser, gaming and digital worlds like Second Life by allowing websites to host their own Lively rooms and developers to add games to the service via an upcoming application programming interface (API). A combination of flat user growth and a seeming lack of interest (Lively wasn't even compatible with Google's heavily-pushed Chrome browser) attributed to its death.

Sad news for the few thousand users Lively had retained after the launch hype wore off during the summer. To those who enjoyed the service, Google encourages them "to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms."

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HomeAliveIn45

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Jun 4, 2008
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Oddly enough, I haven't thought about 'Lively' since The Escapist first reported it.
Also, the irony of a search engine company not being able to market their own product is pretty poignant.
 

Alone Disciple

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Jun 10, 2008
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HomeAliveIn45 said:
Oddly enough, I haven't thought about 'Lively' since The Escapist first reported it.
Also, the irony of a search engine company not being able to market their own product is pretty poignant.
Well, you're one up on me...I never even heard about it until now.
 

uppitycracker

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Oct 9, 2008
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i actually checked this out, because i was bored at work.... really REALLY REALLY bored... and yeah, it was crap. they needed to get rid of it.
 

cleverlymadeup

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Mar 7, 2008
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i never really thought about it much

kinda sux that it died, on the up side it's one of the few google projects to actually die
 

BleachedBlind

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May 19, 2008
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It was a failure from the beginning. I gave it a shot out of pure curiosity and found myself incredibly bored. I think Google should stick to functionality over frivolity.
 

reaper_2k9

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Oct 22, 2008
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I never knew that it existed the only thing i use Google for is chrome and to look up stuff.