Google is pulling the plug on its virtual world, a second-life esque website, called Lively. Users will have until December 31rst to say goodbye, as that is when the switch will official be turned off.

The accouncement was made on Google’s blog with the reasoning that closing Lively will enable to company to better distribute their resources toward ads, search and web apps. Thankfully, this should not result in any layoffs, as Google plans to move those that worked on Lively to other areas within the company.

Google provided the following quote on the closing of Lively,

“We launched Lively … because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it’s the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people’s lives. But we’ve also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.”

Really though, in this blogger’s opinion, the service never really took off. No doubt inpart to a lack of advertising, as well as niche dominance by Second Life. I would imagine that this will cause an increase in Second Life sign ups, as those who were using Lively look for alternatives.