Google finally makes its move?
The rumors have been around for ages now, but it looks like maybe this time there’s something a little bit more concrete:
Virtual Worlds News: Google Testing A Virtual World At Arizona State University?
The little picture linked in the article has a cartoon dude asking “do you do 3d modeling.”
There’s also SceneCast coming, of course, which like VastPark (and VRML) seems to be more about sharing 3d spaces, but not actually interacting in real-time with other users in them.
I have a feeling we’ll hear lots more about all of this stuff at Virtual Worlds Fall.
According to NPR, they are also supposedly looking to acquire Facebook, but are facing some competition from Microsoft for the social network app.
I have a feeling if Microsoft buys Facebook, Google will counter with it’s own virtual-world-social-networking-thingy.
Google needs Facebook because of the social network already in place (the one true thing google lacks for almost every aspect of its business). In my opinion, if they don’t acquire (and I don’t think they will) then it will be a slow build. If they were to create a “2nd-life-ish” (term used loosely) Google Earth Mesh then it would be built organically at first and I think that there would definitely be some static from people if they just went willy nilly with the data they have now (ie “Let me get this strait, you just imported my gmail contacts to create a social graph and put me in this virtual world just because I have a Gmail account?”).
MS missed an opportunity to develop social connections with Vista. So I could see them trying to pick up Facebook, but neither them nor Google really have a strong internal bulk social connection set as of now (Orkut doesn’t count 🙂
Looks like my “Acquire” in my above comment, might actually mean “Acquire Part Of*“.
OK Raph – dont you dare let Microsoft buy Areae!
I can’t understand how they can compete with Facebook, Second Life, or anybody else in that arena. I have accounts on MySpace, Facebook, Second Life, and have Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail. I use them all frequently, and I’m sure I’ll have a GoogleSpace character on top of all that.
Google’s got my patronage, but I don’t plan on leaving my other virtual spaces.
Why would you want to have the real world as a virtual world, though?
Why would you want a model of anything? (Where’s that rolling eyes icon!?)
Google needs Facebook because of the social network already in place (the one true thing google lacks for almost every aspect of its business).
orkut is one of the top social networks outside the US. Brazil and India, for instance.
I knew Google was up to something in the virtual world space, but I couldn’t figure out what, for the longest time. Having excellent contacts in the company doesn’t help much. 🙂
Well we know it has something to do with advertising. At least my head is less boggled about the adscape purchase.
http://www.google.com/press/annc/annc_adscape.html