Actually, ILL, remember that Google is quick to retire products that utterly fail — in fact, even better than Microsoft. For instance, Google removed AdSense Referrals after having aggresively pushed it to all AdSense users as the only way to get more income. Now they've totally reverted their position and dropped the product. Sure, Orkut is still around and even allows applets, but is anyone still using it besides Brazilians? Google projects that fail disappear from the radar when the effort to support it (in costs of developer hours) is far higher than the rate of new users signed in to a particular product... Google's not different from any other company, the difference being is that they're continuously launching more new products coming from all areas.

Lively is... an experiment. It carries the power of the all-powerful Google brand. It's being pitched on the tech magazines (like Computerworld) as a tool for companies to collaborate in an immersive environment that allows easy contact with telecommuters. It's incredibly easy to embed on MySpace or Facebook. Rooms are isolated, so griefing is easily circumvented. Everything is childishly simple to use, since there are almost zero options. Put enough Google magic behind this, and it'll be a success overnight. Or perhaps it already is. For all purposes, everybody with a registered Google Account is a (potential) Lively user. That's 250 million registered users or so. Lively, in 24 hours, just became four times as big as the whole of the MMORPG/MMO/social 3D world userbase. Spend enough pushing this message/meme through the media and the blogosphere, and what do you think that the world will immediately associate with "virtual worlds"?

Is Second Life threatened by it? You bet it is. I think that Google is scared of losing the battle of the 2D Web, which they dominate. This is a very Microsoftian way to make sure their monopoly on HTML content does not disappear over time. Just push back the technology a decade and tell the world that "this is it". Second Life will be just the "in your dreams" technology for a borderline audience. And this can be sustained for ages. Look how 92% of the world still thinks that Windows is the better choice!...

As for grabbing SL names, I have no doubt that this might happen, like everywhere else, and the advise to register quickly is a very good one. I definitely did that, and like Aimee Weber and others, I've also registered the trademark Gwyneth Llewelyn® ;) because, who knows, someone out there (Microsoft?...) might be launching the next virtual world and I might not be fast enough... but my lawyers will :)

My disappointment with Lively is that it's so *bad*. Tateru is actually way too nice in her description of Lively. Try Meez to see how everything can be done so much better, with much nicer avatars, even easier to use, *interactive* content, and fully platform-neutral. Sure, it's as boring as Lively, but that's not the point: I was expecting much better from Google. Then again, since the launch of Gmail, the only exciting product from Google that really impressed me was Google Analytics...