"We've decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year," reads a post on the Official Google Blog from the Lively team. "We want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business."

"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 team explained. "But we've also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off."