Google to Nuke Second Life?
Most likely not, but rumors are swirling that Google might be working on their own virtual world.
The more I think about it the more interesting this becomes. Think about it. Google video? Ad-Words? Google Earth? Sketch Up? Put all of these together with avatars interacting and you’ve got one powerful POWERFUL place to hang out and interact. The business applications if done right could be staggering.
Could just be a rumor….could be truth….who knows…
One thing I DO know is that it got my mind working overdrive in a rather quick way.
January 29th, 2007 at 9:45 pm |
FYI, here’s the criticism that will emerge– it’s a narrow one, too– that Google Earth represents earth and not a virtual place. The problem with this critique is that it doesn’t address that Earth, assuming it’s ‘a’ grid, is being displayed and navigated as ‘any’ grid could be. They have the technology, software, rendering and such, so it wouldn’t be a far reach.
That said, being that they already have ‘a’ virtual world, ie,. Earth, would they be able to tap into the loyalty of citizens to their own location? I haven’t skydived off of the Transamerica Pyramid in SL, nor landed a rocketship in Fenway Park, since well, it never occurred to me to *build* those.
I’ve always wanted to build a virtual world on top of a RL location, since in the quest of fiction development, I’d like to maintain some accuracy when writing a story about San Francisco 200 years out.
Watch Microsoft too. And the XBOX Live team. That’s my speculation. The dollars and bandwidth are there. As are the tools.