Virtual World Lively’s Plug Is Pulled By Google – Breaking News
November 20, 2008
Author: Ecocandle Riel
(Brian Meeks in Real Life \ CEO at Riel Life Productions | Owner at Riel Life Productions)
At 9:04 pm Easter Standard time, one of the most promising ventures into Virtual Worlds, announced that they would be shutting down. Lively, the Google experiment in virtual worlds, has decided that December 31, 2008 would be the end of the line for their attempt at creating a virtual world. In their blog post, entitled “Lively No More”, “In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it’s the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people’s lives. But we’ve also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.”
What does this mean for virtual worlds. I spent a fair amount of time studying Lively. In fact, I taught myself 3ds Max in order to be able to create content for them. It is surely a disappointment, but I don’t feel that it will have a major impact on the growth of virtual worlds. Second Life, has continued to grow, albeit at a slower pace. There are several other Virtual Worlds which are still in beta, and IBM is aggressively pursuing their vision. I feel like the worst part of this news, is that it dashes the hope that someone with very deep pockets, and certainly Google would fit into that category, would dump tons of money into their virtual world, learn from the mistakes of Linden Labs, and create something vastly superior to anything now available.
In the second paragraph they indicate that they are going to focus on their core businesses. With the global economy on shaky grounds, one can’t fault them for taking such a prudent step. I guess that, even in a world where only our imagination limits what can be done, the realities of real world economics must still be considered.
Thanks Lively, we enjoyed our brief time together.
Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/lively-no-more.html
Entry Filed under: Virtual Worlds. Tags: Google, Linden Lab, Lively, Lively No More, Second Life, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds, Web3.0.
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Business Beyond Reality
Mukul Kumar
Pankaj Nainani
Sheena Anand
David D'Angelo
Brian Meeks
Kanishka Ajwani
Joe Rigby
Ellora Panda
Christopher Keesey
Atul Agarwal
1.
Sheena Anand | November 20, 2008 at 11:47 am
2 years to develop Lively and not even 5 months to declare its lively no more…A move towards hitting their reputation badly.
Good but unfortunately not so successful effort to compete with Second Life…
Hot news though !!!
2.
Business Beyond Reality | November 20, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Yea that’s true. Didn’t quite expect that from GOOGLE. But then I do appreciate their covering post, announcing this news, especially the line “Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it’s the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people’s lives. But we’ve also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.”
I personally feel they did miss out some very important aspects due to which it couldn’t get the market. I’m going to cover the failure story in my forthcoming posts.
3.
Sterling Wright | November 21, 2008 at 11:13 am
I spent some time in Lively when it first launched. I set up a space, streamed in content, linked this to other sites, wandered around to other rooms to explore the potential for decent exchange with other users. I thought Lively represented a viable, new outlet for works created inside my “base world” of SecondLife–a satellite, of sorts. I was excited for Google and held good wishes for the initiative.
But, the fact is…once acclimatized to and active in SecondLife, other virtual platforms simply do not hold appeal for long. By comparison, they are too limited in almost every category in terms of toolkits, so I was never inclined to invest in content creation for Lively. I could have spent more time integrating my Lively space into a broader network of social media platforms, and may have done so had the platform persisted. But it was not my priority.
And, Lively, a “2.5″ platform, was not truly an immersive virtual world anyway, and probably should not be categorized as such. I recognize that those with no prior virtual world experience might migrate more easily into these less-complex “2.5″ platforms and from there, perhaps, graduate to more immersive and demanding environments–at least that was a theory. But for someone already engaged in the most expansive and flexible of the existing platforms, there really was no option of moving backwards.
I am still investing in the slow but continual growth of SecondLife and the development of the independent open Sims.
Kudus to Google for taking a leap…will they eventually decide to buy out Linden Lab? Would the lab even accept if the offer was made? I am inclined to hope not!
Best wishes!
4.
Vidya Ramesh | November 21, 2008 at 11:14 am
I agree with economic depression.. companies are shifting from strategic to operational goals to stay afloat..
5.
Alex Fedotov | November 21, 2008 at 11:16 am
These two ones in particular have:
Metrics and good comment: http://mashable.com/2008/11/19/lively-dead/
Positioning analisys (Christian is insightful as he’d always been): http://www.christianrenaud.com/weblog/2008/11/lively-heads-for-the-giraffe-graveyard.html
6.
Alex Fedotov | November 21, 2008 at 11:16 am
Here’s the whole bunch of responses:
http://yolto.com/FeedTopic.aspx?Id=2114
7.
Charles Henderson | November 21, 2008 at 11:17 am
Personally, I hate to see Google get out of this game. It seems to me that competition is good for everyone. I guess Google found out that its harder than it looks.
8.
Fiona Berry | November 21, 2008 at 11:18 am
The search isn’t anywhere near as it used to be. Lively was stultifyingly boring compared with SL (not Lively at all) and poorly supported by Google throughout
9.
Dave Bloch | November 21, 2008 at 11:19 am
Somehow, it always makes me feel good when one of the behemoths (which change over time, I realize) pulls out and lets the smaller guys through. Linden may be the giant in Virtual right now, but they are a tiny speck compared to the likes of Google and MS. (Now, what I would love to see is Google provide the search engine for Second Life! The one we have now really is a weak spot.)
10.
Daniel Dočekal | November 21, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Google needs to focus on its core business, Lively is yet another example, they are bad in anything else, than search. And that they should not try to be everything.
11.
Caliandris | November 21, 2008 at 3:49 pm
I too have blogged this… it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it was a LOT faster than I thought they’d kill it.
12.
Ecocandle | November 21, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I also found it interesting that the day after they kill lively, they launch their new Themes for gmail. I think this is an indication that they truly focused on their core business, gmail being part of that, and they want to improve in those core areas.
I very much like the new theme I have chosen…”Phantasea”
13.
John Purvis | November 22, 2008 at 4:58 am
I think that this is yet another indicator that Google is trying to grow too fast and too large. I can understand why they want to dip into the virtual worlds pool, but it is becoming more and more apparent every week just how careless and sloppy Google is getting in it’s efforts to be everything to everyone.
Look at Google Docs! I’m sure it has a modicum of usefulness to many people, but it is a horribly implemented system that creates more problems than it resolves. When our company used it, we invested a lot of time into a project that was Microsoft Word-based. Once we were done collaborating remotely, we pulled the finished file off of Google Docs and I spent a great deal of time (a great, great deal of time) making formatting corrections and turning the document into something presentable to our client.
I think that Google Docs has potential, though. It is an alternative that could be extremely useful if given the opportunity to grow and get the bugs out. This is exactly how I feel about other apps like Lively! but I do not feel that Google is taking the time and care with such ventures that is required to make them useful – or fun.
Google is getting in the habit of slinging things to the wall just to see what sticks. Google will eventually regret that it did not take more time and care with some projects.
14.
James Lloyd | November 22, 2008 at 5:03 am
Wow, amazing. I’d kinda thought this might someday unite VR with Google Earth.
15.
Ecocandle | November 22, 2008 at 5:24 am
John,
Your post was very interesting to me. I have not used the docs app yet, but I was very much considering taking the time to give it a look. It seemed like a good idea. I think I will wait a bit, see if I hear that it has been fixed, before I waste time.
Thanks so much…time not wasted = time spent working on something valuable.
Brian
16.
Business Beyond Reality | November 23, 2008 at 4:15 pm
@ Sterling:
Very interesting comments from your end. I do agree with what you’ve written. One of the best things Second Life has done is to support a very easy-to-build interface. I’ve met hundreds of residents from non-technical/design background who’re actually doing great with building stuff in second life.
Google’s decision to back out was quite surprising for me too. And i’m interested to see if Google would like to enter in Second Life, with their sought after search ! Or as you said may be decide on buying out Second Life.
17.
Business Beyond Reality | November 23, 2008 at 4:19 pm
@Charles Henderson:
Google has been playing smart games by buying out new ventures before they reached the epitome. Take for example YouTube, Orkut etc. I wonder why it missed out on buying out Second Life in its early days. I believe Google would have never imagined that Second Life would go so far.
I agree with you: Competition is for everyone !
18.
Business Beyond Reality | November 23, 2008 at 4:27 pm
@Fiona Berry:
I agree. But then a web-browser based environment cannot be as immersive. It has technological constraints. Take for example Vivaty. It’s just the same. And the lack of immersiveness directly affects the feel of being lively.
Lets see if Google comes out with something new !
19.
Business Beyond Reality | November 23, 2008 at 4:36 pm
@Dave Bloch:
Dave I’d differ slightly with your opinion. We cannot underestimate a company. Remember where Google started off before it became GOOGLE? The 3D Web is growing and has a great potential in the years to come. If in the coming years, 3D Web completely replaces the Web2.0, Google would be forced to partner with companies like Linden Lab, Twinity, Active Worlds etc.
Your idea of Google Search in SL is good. Even I think the same !
20.
Business Beyond Reality | November 23, 2008 at 4:40 pm
@Daniel Dočekal:
Google is good in another area. In buying out technologies. Remember YouTube, Orkut? I wonder how they missed out this time !
21.
Business Beyond Reality | November 23, 2008 at 4:46 pm
@John Purvis:
Yes I do agree with you. Google Docs has issues. In fact you can’t share an uploaded pdf document with people, unless and until you share the document point to point. This is a big flaw !
By the way, would you have a case study for that experiment your company did with Google Docs? I’d like to read that. Please let me know.
22.
Business Beyond Reality | November 23, 2008 at 4:48 pm
@James Lloyd :
Yes that would have been good. I still feel lucky that we’re in a time where Google failed in one of its launches !