Lively heads for the giraffe graveyard

Google announced yesterday on their blog that they are shuttering the Lively project.  This is unfortunate for multiple reasons:

1) Google was the first real major player to have a virtual world platform launch, albeit social avatar-chat centric, which in many ways validated the market space to external skeptics.  Terminating the Lively project will reinforce the views of the perpetual doubters due to the press it will receive.  Very public failure.

2) Google had a unique opportunity to tie in Lively with a number of it's other products (GTalk, Chrome, the App suite) and never did so.  This would have made a very strong market position, allowing them to exploit existing GMail/GTalk contacts (as Vivaty does in Facebook) and embed GDocs into collaborative rooms.  No other virtual world company has the horizontal footprint to carry this off, and Google had the resources, the positions staked out on the battlefield, and still miscarried. 

This reminds me of the Persian King Darius III at the battle of Issus against Alexander the Great.  Darius had the overwhelming numbers (in this case, Googles vaunted market capitalization and resources) and somehow still lost to this scrappy upstart (scrappier startups).  It's still to be determined who the Alexander will be in this analogy.

3) There were a number of secondary companies who invested in Lively as a platform for value (Rivers Run Red comes immediately to mind) who are also going to be impacted by the closure.  Startups cannot afford to partner with multiple large company platforms due to the engineering commitment involved. 

At the end of the day, this isn't something as straightforward as Google choosing to 'prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business', as said in the blog.  The entire Lively team was less than a dozen people in a company with 17,000 employees. They have more than a dozen people somewhere in the depths of their finance department who do nothing but analyze the costs of Google trade show tchockies. Cough, Bullshit, Cough.

What this proves to me is that Google is just as political and functionally inert as other large companies, their propaganda aside about being a fluid startup at heart.  Vibrant large companies encourage risk taking and have longer attention spans than 6 months for new products.  It isn't a matter of Google 'not believing in the 3D Internet/Avatar Chat market', as large companies don't believe ANYTHING other than the composite opinions of a few leaders, so you can't say with certainty that there was a single corporate position on Lively.  What is certain is that the team there didn't achieve the level of support from the rest of the organization that would have insured it's success in this challenging market.  Unfortunate, and yet another reason to sell GOOG if you hold it.

Comments

[Nicola Avery]

Hi,

Thanks for this. Vicki Davis has also highlighted this and the problems with just 'dumping' it.

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-happens-when-google-kills-your.html

I realise you are a very busy person but do you know of anyone that could help / advise with possibly downloading rooms already created?

I'm going to go and try and find out anyway.

[Christian]

Nicola,

I'd reach out to developers who are fluent in virtual world design. Rivers Run Red has significant background in Lively, and I'd also reach out to Millions of Us and the Electric Sheep Company as they both have experience in this space as well.

Hope this helps. Christian

[Nicola Avery]

Thanks Christian, this is really helpful, will do,
Much appreciated
Nicola

[oriste]

The Livelyzens (Lively users) are coming together to appeal to Google to keep Lively alive.

Lively is a great platform for interaction as well as creativity. It is easy to use, browser based, embeddable on webpages to bring a 3D experience right on your website. While Lively has been in beta and has limited capability in terms of the objects and avatars available, the Livelyzens have been able to come up with very creative ways to create art from what is available. All this in a "clean" 3D world thanks to Google's vigilance in getting rid of rooms with inappropriate content. More than anything, Lively has become a place to make friends for life – from all over the world with wonderful people.

Please visit our website http://livelyzens.com and participate in the Lively Machinima contest we are conducting to show the creative potential of Google Lively. Please also sign our online petition http://livelyzens.com/petition.aspx

We kindly request netizens to support us in reviving a wonderful 3D world that is a kid friendly and a creative space for art and interaction amongst adults.