Google Enters Virtual World

PCMag.com is offering a preview/review of Google Lively (Beta). This is the online giant's entrance into the virtual world dominated by Second Life. Here is the summary of the article:

Lively gives you a 3D chat world with a very clear interface, and it makes getting into virtual worlds much easier than it is with Second Life or World of Warcraft, which both use far more sophisticated 3D rendering for much larger, more realistic worlds (and consequently require far more PC horsepower). Lively gives you nowhere near as rich an experience, but it's a decent way to test the waters. Because of the lack of depth and realistic physics, however, I can't really see Lively, in its current form, becoming a serious challenger to Second Life. It seems more of a phenomenon people will check out just once or twice before they move on.

Here is a video preview from YouTube: