Not Really All That Lively
November 20th, 2008
As seen on Raph Koster’s site, Google Lively is shutting its doors next month.
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.
How was it a tough decision?
I think that just shows you how hard it is to make a pure VW when even Google can’t seem to do it.
Alternatively, it could have been a lack of marketing, because I’m a bit of a Google Fanboy and I never heard a word about it until today.
Not sure I agree Cuppa. Lively reeked of something that was shoved out the door because “people might think it’s neat” – it never felt like a serious attempt in any way to me.
Google lively? Never heard of it…
I’m with Calandryll on this – it seemed like typical Google “build it and they will come”. They hoped to iterated their way to a Second Life “killer”, imo.
I’m a fond user of many Google apps, but Lively was poorly conceived and poorly executed.
I do recall having heard of it once before (maybe on this blog?), but it’s probably another instance of the bury-the-mistakes reflex which Google and so many other companies display on a regular basis.
Original article from Lum: http://brokentoys.org/2008/07/08/hi-this-is-google-im-taking-over-your-market-thx/