
Google Kills Lively  - jaydub
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/19/google-kills-lively/
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aneesh
As a TC commenter pointed out, the traffic graph for Knol looks just like that
of Lively:
[http://www.google.com/trends?q=lively.com,+knol.google.com&#...</a><p>Maybe
(hopefully?) Knol is next.

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unalone
Poor Google. They've got all these neat ideas that just don't work.

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tlrobinson
I'm going to disagree and say Google hasn't had many neat ideas in years. I
can't think of anything they've done recently that's had anywhere near as much
impact as PageRank, AdSense/AdWords, Google Maps, or Gmail. All of those were
released in 2005 or earlier.

Knol is a tweaked Wikipedia. Lively is a Second Life clone. Open Social was
the response to Facebook Apps.

Chrome, Android, and maybe App Engine are the only recent things I can think
of that have any potential.

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brandnewlow
So google, a company that prizes automation and data-driven decision-making
over subjective filters and editorial oversight....doesn't do so hot with
community-driven projects?

Not so surprised.

I dunno, I get a warm feeling when stuff like this flops for them. Shows
they're human. They probably learned a great deal that will be applied
elsewhere.

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greyman
Exactly my thought. They should focus more on what they are good at, data-
driven algos.

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kqr2
I wonder if google will open source the software.

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jonursenbach
I'd be willing to bet that that's not going to happen due to how involved it
was and that it wasn't built off of any open source ideals.

Is this the first Google product to be explicitly killed (not counting ones
that go stale after being acquired)?

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gojomo
'Google Answers' was shut down (but leaving the archives up) in November 2006,
after over 4 years of operation.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Answers>

~~~
jonursenbach
Ah yeah Google Answers...

