Google Lively (also known as Lively by Google or Lively by Google BETA) was a web-based virtual environment created and developed by Google. It was discontinued and permanently shut down on December 31, 2008.
Type of site | Virtual world |
---|---|
Owner | |
Created by | |
Launched | July 8, 2008 |
Current status | Discontinued |
Lively was only supported on Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, using Windows XP or Windows Vista. It required a special download as well as Flash. The program was designed to be integrated with the Web and provided a new way to access information. This was enabled through the embedding of Lively "rooms" into any HTML webpage—which meant content could be provided in a two-dimensional format, and communication surrounding the topic of that content could be made in the three-dimensional room without the need to enter a separate program.[1]
Engineering manager Niniane Wang supervised this Google project, described in The New York Times by Brad Stone:
Google eventually introduced this product on July 8, 2008 with this comment by Wang:
Gadgets in Lively rooms could also run on a user's desktop through Google Desktop.[3]