Google thinking of Building it's Own Second Life

How old is the basic technology that makes up Second Life?

How hard will it be to produce a 3d world in 10 years?

There could be 1000's

But if there are that many, each of them is relatively useless. It's as if there were 1000 internets. Not quite the same thing as "the internet", with many sites.

Doesn't Google list search results according to "hits"? If that's true it will be like the Google results I see in my searches with the "most likely" resuts first which will mean the most well known will certainly have an edge on everyone else. It sure will make it harder for the "little guy" to get ahead........though that is a fact of life anyway. At least we would know with reasonable confidence that the listing order was not artificially inflated with zombies sitting in camp chairs.

And as a side, I think many more real businesses will be attracted to Google's virtual world due the the past successes of the company. In the long run it seems it would be a much better platform with many more options for us users. I can so many more members not ever leaving that world........they got email, access to real world products and information, plus a place to play............and never leaving their site.

My immediate thoughts anyway.

That was my first thought as well.

Pass - I'll take SL with all its wobbly warts before being interested in having ads shoveld at me from all directions after they track every whim and interest I have.

Again I dunno. Standards in this area? JPEG. MPEG. Noone is really tearing these down. I think that the power of the net has created a much greater impetus to more uniform standards in general in areas of technology, not less. The Saudis try to block websites they do not like, but they arent creating a separate internet.

But There are 1000's of different websites.

Think about how many chat rooms there are.

How many MMOs are there? Dozens?

Its Second Life that wants the 3d Internet metaverse. That only works if everyone else wants it too.

I think corporations would be quicker to enter, but would be just as stupid about development. They don't understand the culture of virtual worlds. They expect people to flock to them merely because they put a presence in. It doesn't work that way. If corporations measured success by website usage, they would die on a vine because most people spend their lives doing other things, and only coming to them when they needed something. I can't tell you the last time I went to a company website other than SL to grab my account info or Google for the search engine.

But on your second point, you are dead on - why would you play or build anywhere else when all the other aspects of your digital life are right there? Email, news, chat, document creation - holy cow, talk about being addictive.

Exactly. If Google could link all of those together seamlessly (hard to do, but they can swing it if they want I think), that right there would be very attractive. Seamless access to internet, Gmail, documents, pictures, virtual worlds, all at a click in-world ... that would be interesting.

Kinda like AOL 10 years ago.

shhhhh don't say that!!

No. AOL didn't offer a 3D virtual world with user-created content. So it's like what AOL was, plus VR.

Or Compuserve 15 years ago lOL

Google ranks search entries according to the number of other sites that link to them. Unfortunately there's no good equivalent for SL (apart possibly from Picks, but not everyone uses them).

well Yeah, I mean by the standards of the time.

AOL had a big chunk of the internet users and a lot never left AOL even used the AOL browser.

They also track where you go, though, to present personalized ads.

The examples of AOL and Compuserve show very clearly what happens when you sit on your laurels while the worl passes you by


You listening LL?

True, but with a 3D internet, Google could be well positioned -- thats all I mean. Noone knows what will happen of course, it's all speculation inherently.

It's all speculation.............and a little wishful thinking.

Well it could gobble a big chunk of the virtual world biz for a while, but eventually the little ones would spring up.

TBH in many ways Second Life was better in 2005. So the idea of small worlds shouldnt be as scary as it sounds.

you can welcome the google overlords, because truth be told, google is the type of company that just buys out a "smaller" "less known" :cough: company.


if anything, this is a negotation tactic, especially if there is stuff on the table now. scare a company into selling or else, we will just build our own. google will pay a lot for a site and concept already intact and in place :::cough::

Well it's not "scary", but if Web 2.0 teaches us anything its that people like to congregate in a small number of platforms for reasons of scale. So if there is to be a Web 3.0 meaning a 3D internet with AVs, I have to think that the congregation principle will be present as well.

OMG!!!! googlechairs !!!!

This is a good point Victorria. No matter how well integrated "Google Life" will be with the world, people will still form enclaves and societies within it. It won't be a free-for-all, and the tracking statistics will record that people stay in particular areas/regions/whatever. If I hang out in Hassidic Jewish Google Life, I seriously doubt I'll be plagued with Muslim conversion adverts. I don't know where I'm going with this but I agree with you.

But it may be easier, faster, and less expensive to build a new one from scratch than to buy SL, then fix problems like inventory loss and make whatever content changes they'd want.

I agree.............it's been a number years since SL's inception. And, undoubtedly, others have been peeking into what LL has been doing. Seeing the mistakes, the sucesses, and direction it is headed. I'm willing to stake a good amount of my reputation on the fact that many of those future competitors have joined SL and probably still are relatively active members...........watching, learning. Plus in the years since it's beginning there have certainly been "Lindens" who have left due to differences in philosophy or direction.........and they are almost certain to be as talented (or maybe more so) than the ones left in LL. All this means any new attempt at a virtual world mimicking SL will not include the same mistakes.

I think Google is big enough to find (or recruit) those people. And being as strong as Google is in the internet business they would be wise enough to properly fund and impliment such an undertaking.