It's not often that Google make multi-million dollar misjudgments, but it appears that after only 4 and a half months, the search behemoth is pulling the plug on 'Lively' at the end of December 2008.

According to , ending the project will not mean lay-offs, as the team will be reassigned to other Google projects.

"It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business...We'd encourage all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms."

Good on them for at least trying, even if Lively was IMHO rather passe.