On December 31, Google will be shutting down its web-based virtual social environment Lively. 

"Embedded rooms in blogs and other web pages will continue to show an image," reads a statement on Lively's official page, "but users will no longer be able to enter Lively rooms and interact."

Launched last July, the Google Labs project allowed users to create virtual rooms, decorate them, and create avatars. Likened to Second Life and Sony's "it's coming, we swear!" PlayStation Home, Lively didn't quite take off like the folks at Google had expected. 

And maybe I was part of the problem -- I've never once used it. Perhaps it's because I don't spend much time in virtual spaces outside of cooperative or competitive videogames (I prefer to do my chatting in person, thank you very much). Still, it's sad to see such an ambitious project go down, and I look forward to the ineffectual online petitions trying to keep it alive.

In other news, Google recently revealed "skins" for Gmail, one that includes ninjas. What more do you people want?