After less than five months, Google have pulled the plug on Lively.

In a fairly terse statement, no substantive reason is given for the axing beyond wanting to concentrate on “our core search, ads and apps business”.

It’s a quick demise for a virtual world that showed some initial promise. It did have its controversies over its short life, but nothing that would have driven this decision. Lack of patronage is the most obvious explanation and there’s no doubt that competitors will feel a little more sunlight’s appeared on the horizon for their products.

Will you miss Lively? Will we see Google re-enter the marketplace in the near future or will they just buy up someone else to achieve any virtual world ambitions they have?