Google宣布Lively项目失败

In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it’s the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people’s lives. But we’ve also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.

That’s why, despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams.

We’d encourage all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms.

Google说：我们要把自己的精力更多地集中到Search、ads、apps等方向上，Lively将在本年度12月底被关闭，在这个项目组工作的人都将被调整到其他组。估计也包括我之前在博客中说到的牛屄哄哄的王忻。

很多人曾经对这个项目给予了厚望，认为他可以撼动第二人生在互联网虚拟社区里的地位，但是事实告诉我们，Lively并没有取得这样的成绩。还有人猜测Lively可以和Google 的Maps、Earth结合，成为全球最大的互联网真实社会，但是一直没有，直到今天，Google都没把这个Lively和其他的产品进行结合。

Google看来还是不擅长做这种类似网络游戏或者网络聊天室的东西，他们最擅长的还是对信息的梳理和索引，他们不擅长创造信息。

Google Lively估计很快就要销声匿迹了，我也是这个产品的测试小白鼠之一。在它濒临死亡之际，我抓了几个截图，留下我的“hard work”。