[sd]

I somewhat disagree about this not being very "Googley." Although Lively is very different than the Google homepage in terms of presentation; both share the same ends of organizing the world's information and making it accessible. Google's press release blog post about Lively suggests, "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]]" [1]. Perhaps in some abstract sense, Lively allows users to store and present information that is difficult to disseminate via text or other currently available methods. On the other hand, maybe it's just Google's way of making money on a perceived market that is the intersection between video gamers and Facebookers.

[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/be-who-you-want-on-we...