Google almost certainly creating multi-user virtual world

by Samuel Axon Nov 4th 2007 at 10:35AM

Filed under: MMO industry, New titles, News items, Virtual worlds, Snow Crash

World of Googlecraft? GoogleQuest? Pirates of the Google Sea? No, really. It could happen. Sort of.

Apparently Google isn't satisfied with how massive it is already; the tech juggernaut might be developing a virtual online world. Okay, so it probably won't really be an MMORPG per say, but it could be something similar to Second Life. Rumors of the project have been gaining momentum for a while now, and we here at Massively are laying out all the evidence right here for you to see.

Way back in January major media outlets speculated that Google would use its then-newly-acquired SketchUp asset to turn Google Earth into some sort of Second Life-type experience. Then The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was to acquire Adscape Media Inc., a company that specializes in creatively integrating advertising into games. In September, ASU students began testing a mysterious application very likely connected to Google, and observers speculated that the application could be a 3D virtual environment.

Google made a deal with Multiverse (the company connected to the possibly problematic Firefly MMO) to sync Multiverse's flexible virtual reality engine with Google's assets and tools. The Reuters blog MediaFile points out that au courant industry figures are taking the existence of a Google virtual world for granted at this point.

The fire keeps getting more fuel. Multiverse's Corey Bridge was quoted in The Financial Times describing a future when people will use their real identities (rather than fictional character avatars) to interact with one another in virtual worlds that will be integrated into social networking platforms similar to Facebook or MySpace. Google is making a huge social networking push this month. Will World of Googlecraft be part of it? Stay tuned.

Tags: adscape, breaking, corey-bridge, financial-times, firefly, firefly-mmo, google, google-earth, mediafile, multiverse, reuters, second-life, sketchup, social-networking, wall-street-journal

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Gwyneth Llewelyn said on 4:12PM 11-04-2007

Hmm, so perhaps, thanks to OpenSocial, MyGoogleWorld will look much more like Kaneva with their quasi-Facebook "companion website".

What does Google mean with "a future when people will use their real identities"? ;) My account under Google is for Gwyneth Llewelyn too...

Alcevious said on 6:37PM 11-04-2007

Metaverse here we come!

Eric Rice said on 9:21PM 11-04-2007

That companion website on Kaneva is vital though, since I can manage all of my media assets, relationships, grouping, etc, without ever logging in. SL is supposedly going to have this, but they have a much slower dev cycle.

Google can implement and WELL. They lack avatars, but every other component and a massive 3D object repository already, yeah, game on.

I've seen this one for a while and have been scrambling to recreate all of my work in SL in formats that can import to any 'defacto standards'-based virtual world or game world that comes along.

Viajero Pugillist said on 5:58PM 11-05-2007

Yes, Google can implement well and elegantly, and so I'm looking forward.

I just wish they'd instead buy out SL, which suffers more from a lack of deep pockets and numbers of engineers than anything else in pushing development along. Their cultures are similar. Google would add a more accessible interface and an ability to scale. Imagine SL with Google server power!