Google kills its Lively virtual world

Following a ‘tough decision’, Google has decided to shut down its 3D virtual world – Lively – at the end of the year.

“It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. 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,” stated the official Google blog.

Lively.com was launched by Google Labs in July this year, allowing users to create an avatar and experience life in a virtual world. It generated headlines around, with many expecting it to overshadow virtual world favourite – Second Life.

The service will officially discontinue on December 31, after which embedded virtual ‘rooms’ used in blogs and other web pages will continue to show an image, but users will no longer be able to enter Lively rooms and interact.

While the company has always been open to experimenting with new services and products, Google admits that they’ve also “…accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.”