One other thought and a semi amendment to my last post. Google’s social platform, currently in Beta, also seems like an obvious choice for extending the virtual worlds concept within the Google ‘product development scheme”.

Orkut promises to allow you to:

Connect with friends and family using scraps and instant messaging
Discover new people through friends of friends and communities
Share your videos, pictures, and passions all in one place

While Orkut looks a lot more like Facebook or mySpace than SL, the concept of communities and social spaces, perhaps linked at some point to Google Earth, bears watching (if Orkut hadn’t been so poorly managed, there’s a <a href=”“>wonderful overview on Wikipedia of the ups and downs).