Today Google has launched a new free service named Lively which at first glance seems to become a challenger to Second Life.

It's a three dimensional application which enables the user to enter virtual rooms.

Google have said that the service is completely free and their goal is to allow more users to enjoy virtual worlds.

Furthermore, Google has also released a Facebook application for Lively. And a MySpace version is in the works.

Niniane Wang a representative of Google spoke about this new service:

We know people already spend a lot of time online socializing, so we just want to try to make it more enjoyable.

Google thinks Lively will encourage even more people to dive into alternate realities because it isn't tethered to one website like Second Life, and it doesn't cost anything to use. After installing a small packet of software, a user can enter Lively from other websites, like social networking sites and blogs.

So what are the implications for the future? We could argue that one of Google's main missions is to provide information to world wide web users, this is most likely not the end of what they got in store, probably only the beginning.

The possibilities are endless, we could be seeing a virtual Wikipedia Grand Library where we can access user made information. Obviously this would be in a very beautiful building where we have our avatars to find our findings in a Café which can be found next door. Or how about different Google information centre’s, where we can put our questions to virtual avatars, instead of using the search engine in a browser?

Also in the future perhaps we'll be seeing conference calling and meetings, interviews and what not - online - in a virtual world. That would be quite something, wouldn't it? Presentations can be done for different products too. As I said, the possibilities are endless. Only your imagination limits you.

Google is always on the forefront lately. Google left and right. Do you think this will change how the virtual world works? Will Lively compete with Second Life? I'd say yes... within time.

A group of Arizona State University students have tested Lively for Google.

Google Lively

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