Google is reportedly building an avatar-based, Google Earth mashup, a virtual reality designed to compete against the likes of secondlife.com. The rumoured name for this new virtual reality is though to be “MyWorld”.
Similar to Second Life, “My World” would allow users to create an avatar of themselves, as well as build virtual homes, watch concerts, play games and socialise with avatars of their friends. Most importantly, My World will allow advertisers to sell lucrative adword ads on this new platform. But instead of a fictional virtual space.
It makes total sense that Google is taking this very seriously, since it is better placed than Second Life to create a more realistic virtual reality world. Google can do this better by basing the virtual world on Google Earth and integrating its other services such as social networking site Orkut, Google Talk, Google Street-View, and Google Sketch-Up.
Bottom line… A successful virtual reality site will allow Google to sell more ads in a new virtual environment.
Speculation is that Google My World will be released later on this year, so stay tuned…
