Google Invites Avatar Banter in Lively Chat Rooms

If you already thought it was a Google world and we’re all just living in it — well, now you can with the introduction of Lively, Google’s free 3-D virtual world application that brings game-like qualities to the concept of Internet chat. “The Lively team wants to help people experience another dimension of the Web,” Niniane Wang, a Google engineering manager, wrote in a post on the Official Google Blog. “We hope you will use the product to express yourself with and without words, and to do this in the places you already visit on the Web.”