For months now I have been talking about virtual worlds like Second Life and Entropia Universe, and I always end the discussion by mentioning that it is only a matter of time until Google gets into the act.  Last week they announced their first foray into the virtual space with Lively.  Although I was glad to see them joining the arena, I was not pleased that the first version would only run on Windows XP and Vista.  Since my main computer is a Mac, I had to go to my backup desktop machine in order to install the system.  Google’s strategy is to let users create rooms that are listed on a menu.  Once you have created your avatar and associated it with your account, you can visit any of the rooms and communicate with the others that are present. I have been pondering what the endgame is for Google because it is very clear to me that this is just an early toe in the water so to speak.  The whole website has the feel of some disenfranchised functionality that they are just trying to test out for now.  There is no central land, or place that unites these rooms, there is no economy there. In fact, Lively cannot really be called a virtual world because there is no world there.  This tells me that Google has a much larger plan for the functionality they are now testing.

It has been rumored that they want to integrate virtual functionality on top of Google Earth and let people create a parallel virtual universe that sits on top of the real globe.  In other words, I could teleport to the headquarters of the company that I want information from and just walk in the front door of their 3D building represented in the StreetScape environment, and talk to an employed avatar. Maybe I am right on with this, or maybe they have other plans, like letting their avatars walk through the Internet in new ways.  I just wish they would be clearer about what their intentions are because the Lively site smacks of an early beta.  Not that I am against early beta’s, I just wish I understood more of how they see this capability really being leveraged.  I actually would have been happier had they bought Second Life from Linden Labs and used it as a launching pad for future plans…

Another new site on the virtual front is Vivaty.  Their angle seems to be creating virtual spaces that can be used inside of platforms like Facebook and MySpace.  Although they get points for mixing two popular paradigms, I still wonder why creating yet another set of virtual rooms makes sense.  If they cannot be connected to other virtual worlds, it just seems like an orphaned use of the technology.

Providing a space for avatars to talk, while not standardizing the avatars across platforms just does not seem to have legs to me.  I am sure that we will see many players enter this game, but only a few large ones survive.  People will want a robust world, with robust capabilities, and one avatar.  No way are they going to create multiple avatars across 5 different platforms.

Scott Klososky
scott@klososky.com