When I first read about the formation of a new privacy think tank in Washington funded initially by AT&T, my first instinct was to see it in light of the company’s battle against Google. And I do think that is part of the story, but I also think the new group has the potential to do some real good.

MacBook owners up in arms over new copyright software.[PaidContent ]IRS looking at Google/Mozilla relationship.[Slashdot ]Google kills Lively, it's browser based virtual worlds.[TechCrunch ]T-Mobile picks Yahoo for its mobile portal.[SiliconAlleyInsider ]VC cash crunch likely to get worse.[SiliconAlleyInsider ]--Andrea Chalupa . □

Mozilla renewed its search deal with Google last August, signing a three-year contract that ends in November 2011. Good thing too; the agreement was set to expire this month and if it had Mozilla would have been forced to look elsewhere for the bulk of its income.

Google will shut down by the end of the year its Lively virtual world, which was the company's alternative to Second Life.

Google Inc. has opened an online photo gallery that will include millions of images from Life magazine's archives that have never been seen by the public before.

The Google Blog announced they will be discontinuing Lively, Google’s Virtual World project. In short, they said that Lively is simply “not going to pay off” and that they will be closing it down by the end of December.

So much for the idea of a second Second Life.  Lively, launched by Google this July, has already been deemed something of a failure, and the search giant's issued a notice that it will more or less kill the collection of virtual rooms at the end of December. read more

FornaxChemica writes "In a surprise move, Google announced today, both on-site and in its blog, that it will shut down permanently its 3D virtual world Lively by the end of the year, becoming one of Google's few scrapped products and one of the most short-lived too, barely lasting 6 months. No official reason was given, only that Google wants to 'prioritize his resources and focus more on his ...

Google Inc. has opened an online photo gallery that will feature millions of images from Life magazine's archives that have never been seen by the public before.

Google's "me too" virtual world Lively will be dead by the end of the year—just six months after it launched. It was almost inevitable though, as Google debuted Lively well after the virtual world frenzy had simmered down.