From The Sims to Second Life, the realm of virtual worlds has captivated internet and computer users for years. Now, search giant Google has brought its own 3D virtual world to the online arena - yesterday, it announced the launch of Lively, the newest addition to the Google Labs family.Lively lets you create and personalise your own online avatar and place them in a personal room that users can decorate to reflect their real world tastes. And unlike Second Life - perhaps its biggest competitor - Lively can be accessed across the sites you already regularly visit. So instead of adding www.lively.com to the list of websites you trawl through each day, users can embed Lively features onto existing properties, like a blog or a social network, using Google widgets.
The new feature is already available to use on Facebook, but developers are reported to be still working on a suitable version of Lively for MySpace.
In addition, Lively includes support for playing YouTube videos on virtual televisions and users can show images in virtual photo frames inside their Lively room. Extra gadgets found in your room mean that Lively can run on desktops too.
Here's a screenshot of one of Lively's rooms, designed as an animated sampling of Google.
Writing on the Google blog, Google Engineering Manager, Niniane Wang, said: "The Lively team wants to help people experience another dimension of the web...
"Of course, you can chat with each other and you can interact through animated actions. In our user research we've been amazed at how much more poignant it is to receive an animated hug than seeing the text '[[hug]]'. "
According to Google, the search engine enlisted the help the help of students from Arizona State University and gathered their feedback on the online world before its release. But what will the general feedback be from blogs and online users? Are there now just too many virtual worlds for users to visit?
The reception has so far been mixed. While many are praising Lively's capacity to be embedded onto other sites like Facebook, influential UK tech site, The Register, suggests that the virtual world could be just another excuse for 'casual encounters' online, stating: "According to Indian University's Edward Castronova, sex contributes to 'a substantial portion, perhaps even the majority' of economic transactions in Second Life."
TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld, on the other hand, highlights how much investment has been poured into virtual worlds in 2008 - reportedly, $345 million so far. It's certain that Google has invested much time, energy and resources into creating Lively, but will they recoup any of this? According to CNNMoney.com, probably not, since Google claim to have no plans to sell advertising space in the virtual world.
However, one thing's for sure - Google are eager to hear about what individuals think of their new fledgling product. There's a dedicated feedback page for Lively, with a list of features to which users can suggest improvements or even post a new suggestion. Through this feedback and future developments, perhaps Lively will in time eclipse Second Life as the web's most famous alternate reality.
