By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

What the hell? No sooner have I gotten my bed up the stairs and my bachelor pad all set up, Google has decided to pull the plug on its Second Life-like set up, Lively. As of the end of the year, they are killing it. It’s history baby.

What is it with Google and its beta products that never make it past its first few months? We start playing with them and begin to like them, then after a while…BAM! They close up shop never to be seen again. I thought it was Yahoo who was notorious for doing that? Now it seems Google is doing it too.

OK, I admit I was deeply skeptical of Lively and its exact place in a search company, but it’s one of those products that grow on you after a while.    You dress your character up, you get your virtual pad together and you invite a few virtual good looking friends around for a dance and a conversation or two.   After a while, you realize a few hours have flown by and you think “wow! this Lively thing isn’t so bad after all!”.

Lively also had the potential for Google to place advertising in it – virtual billboards for example, interactive YouTube videos inside Lively rooms, and so on.    So it really mystifies me why Google is pulling the plug on this!    Killing this product is almost an impardonable sin!

Fans are distraught and have set up a special Lively room to talk about it (for all the good THAT will do).   That’s like doing an online petition.

I wonder what will be the next Google service to get killed?    Want to place any bets?