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Lively, Google's answer to Second Life, will close at the end of this year, less than six months after its launched.

Although Google hasn't revealed official user numbers, Lively appears to be the Mary Celeste of the virtual world. The majority of the "rooms" listed on the Lively site have been visited by only a

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handful of people, with even the most popular locations attracting only tens of thousands of visitors.

In a post credited to the Lively Team on the Google Blog, the company admits the site hasn't attracted enough interest. "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," the blog claims. "But we've also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off."

"That's why, despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we've decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year."

With tech layoffs coming thick and fast at the moment, Google has stressed that staff working on Lively will be assigned to different projects.