news report 5 !

Mikayla Chiarello
News Report 5
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10103412-52.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0


“Google shutting down 'Lively'”

This article was about Google’s virtual game world known as ‘Lively’. It was just launched this summer and was often compared to Second Life. Lively was web based and it allowed it’s users to create rooms and characters in the world which could then even be put onto blogs and on facebook. It sounds pretty interesting and like a good concept, but it never got the attention or popularity it seeked so Google has chosen to shut down the project and put the energy and workers that were working on ‘Lively’ onto other more successful projects. Google was quoted as saying, "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." They also said that this does not mean they will be laying people off, they will just reassign these workers to other areas of research. I think that it is a good idea to pull out of a project that although seems great hasn’t really made a following. Those workers could be putting their time to more successful projects that could one day blow our minds. I also think it’s good that just because the project didn’t take off as expected, they are keeping the workers and just reassigning them.