Google eyeing its own 'Second Life?'
For some time now, we here at CNET News.com have been hearing whispers that Google might be looking to get into the virtual world space, particularly in light of the increasing interest of existing environments like Second Life, and the success of Google Earth and the search giant's purchase of the Sketchup technology.
Well, now we might finally be on to something. According to TechCrunch, Google may already be testing its own 3D virtual world technology, in a secret experiment at Arizona State University.
And according to a report published Monday from eMarketer, Google is "planning enhancements to Google Earth to let users connect virtually with one another."
To be sure, there's no doubt that Google has the resources, especially with Sketchup and Google Earth, to build a vast and powerful 3D virtual world. To many, they're very likely the only ones who could ramp up such an operation and quickly make it successful.
But the key to a really vital virtual world is user-created content. And while users of services like Sketchup could easily import huge amounts of precreated 3D content into a Google-run virtual world, it wouldn't be the kind of new, emergent content that populates Second Life and, to a lesser extent, There.
What that means is that a Google virtual world would still take a long time to have the wide variety and total diversity that it would need to catch the popular imagination. Of course, it would almost certainly have a technological superiority to the shaky Second Life platform, and that could go a long way to bringing in mass numbers of users. But, it would not be an overnight thing.
If it's even happening. And with rumors being what they are, you never know.
A Google spokesman offered this comment: "We're always looking for new ways to help our users connect with each other, share information, and express themselves, but we don't have any new details to share at this time."
The report follows on the heels late last week of a TechCrunch blog item saying that Google will announce a set of APIs on November 5 that will allow developers to "leverage Google's social graph data. They'll start with Orkut and iGoogle (Google's personalized home page), and expand from there to include Gmail, Google Talk and other Google services over time."
The move is designed, according to TechCrunch's anonymous sources, to address the "Facebook issue."
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between. E-mail Daniel.
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Rich
@ http://rich.greenbush.us
Its tempting to think you could going and find your home on a virtual map of the city you live in. But will companies sue for planting, say for example, a travel agency location on the virtual map of Dodge Island in Miami? Would planting a virtual business next door to a cruise line's headquarters be treated as an implied copyright infringement? Could I fight somebody putting an virtual adult bookstore on the Google Earth location of my home, church, etc?
Odds are Google would dodge that issue. One way might be with instanced housing and territory, like you see with MMORPG games. I'm tracking the Lord of the Rings Online, which will overlap instances of streets and homes in groups. Sort of the Diagon Alley of the internet....there's a thought.
And surly Google sees a method to tap this pursuit for profit. I can see AdSense plugging into a virtual bar on virtual South Beach and getting money when people enter said venues-view ads as they go. Anchoring websites, or running a Google powered virtual section of a blog or website, that appeals to me directly.
I think Google would utterly crush Second Life, even if that game isn't the prime target for their efforts. Vastly more people willing to translate real money into virtual things through Google I suspect.
I am not alone in finding an irony in the growing presence of Intel in SL; they recently opened a site with a conference center there. No help or hope for this problem from INTEL (a few of us have been on their blog). I guess they don?t use their own chips.