By David Chartier
November 20, 2008 - 12:45PM CT

Some of Google's most successful and interesting products are born out of "20 percent time," a portion of the work week that employees are encouraged to spend on nurturing their own ideas. Gmail is one of the company's most popular 20 percent products.

Google Lively, a virtual 3D world that people could customize and embed in their own web sites, is another. Google launched it in July, but it looks like it will not be sharing Gmail's fate. Google's official blog has announced that the social 3D experiment that is Lively will be shut down at the end of December. Google says it was a tough decision but, like everyone else right now, the company is prioritizing resources and focusing on its core products in the search, ad, and app business.

Lively's project members will be reassigned to other projects within the company. We went hands on with Lively in July when it first launched, declaring it to fit the "20 percent" monicker a little too well. The idea behind the product is that website owners could customize a virtual room and embed it on their site, allowing visitors (those visitors willing to install a Lively browser plug-in, at least) to socialize with something besides flat, text-based comments.

Users could create customizable avatars with a number of interactive actions, such as high-fives, shaking hands, picking fights, or even Darth-Vader-style choke holds. "Of course, you can chat with each other, and you can also interact through animated actions," Google's original Lively announcement explained. "In our user research, we've been amazed at how much more poignant it is to receive an animated hug than seeing the text [[hug]]."