From GayGamer: What's The Deal With Google Lively?

On Tuesday, Google launched its Second Life competitor, a virtual world known as Google Lively. It touts itself as a virtual world that, unlike Second Life, complements your actual life.

How this magical complement is supposed to happen isn't clear to me at the moment, only that Google seems to think that by integrating Lively with IE and Firefox, they're adding a great... virtual world... experience... to your... browser?

The end result seems more like a chat room that combines some static graphical flourishes and all the fun of standing in a room with strangers while everyone's facing in different directions. With one guy who can't stop break dancing.

True, installing the minimal client took about five seconds and then I was living large with Lively - and given my choice of hairstyles (that looked as if they'd been yanked straight from the Mii Channel), three shirts to wear, and even a change of pants. A change of pants? That's supposed to rival Second Life? (Which, admittedly, isn't all that useful itself.)

The controls are awkward, which for a 3D world that appears in your browser window is a bit of a deal-breaker. The absence of money would be neat, but since Lively isn't programmable, you're left to enjoy the few pieces of furniture and clothing that come with the package. It gets old fast, so far.

Who wants to chat in a virtual Silicon Valley industrial park? Why would I create my own empty 3D chat room? Worse still, why would I inflict my own empty 3D chat room on any of my friends?

A Facebook app and a forthcoming MySpace app give Lively legs that are a little longer, but not by much - especially since it doesn't do Mac, only Windows.

I'm wondering if maybe Google didn't copy precisely the worst aspects of Second Life, leaving out the ingenuity, freedom, and free-range open source possibilities.

Talk to me - I know that Lively is brand new, and will take some time to settle into its niche, but is that niche even remotely viable? Or fun?

[SPECIAL HOMOTRON BONUS CONTENT: What's the financial angle behind this? Google can't monetize YouTube, which fundamentally altered the way people use the internet. Where do their hopes lie with Lively, a service that will never fundamentally alter anything?]