Worlds in Motion tipped me off to a round-up of evidence by Massively for the speculated move by Google into the virtual worlds business. It’s a nice linkage out to other sources of speculation.

The following section of the round up is interesting:

The fire keeps getting more fuel. Multiverse’s Corey Bridge was quoted in The Financial Times describing a future when people will use their real identities (rather than fictional character avatars) to interact with one another in virtual worlds that will be integrated into social networking platforms similar to Facebook or MySpace. Google is making a huge social networking push this month. Will World of Googlecraft be part of it? Stay tuned.

Google involvement with Multiverse hints at being able to walk through a massively parallel version of the ‘real world’, perhaps mashing together stand-along virtual islands and some sort of enhanced version of Google Earth with layers of Sketch-Up and other apps on top.

It sounds as if Google and Microsoft fought it out for a slice of Facebook. And that losing the Facebook battle, Google then released a social networking development tool called OpenSocial.

I’m not a Google watcher – there seems to be a whole industry of people with their fingers held up in the air trying to gauge Google’s direction (its either the coming tsunami or a gentle rain, I suppose).

But a few quick observations: Google’s stated business aim is information related. It seems to lean towards applications that are as open as possible, so long as those applications facilitate the gathering and distributing of information. OpenSocial puts the hands of Web 2.0 development into the hands of whoever wants it.

The speculation on the Google entry into virtual worlds may follow a similar model – work with platforms like Multiverse, try to eliminate the pesky walls that prevent cross-tabbing of information due to avatar anonymity, and make it easier for others to develop platforms where information resides and can be linked, sorted, and cross-aggregated.

As far as I know, Google has never entered the context business, other than to create information architectures that allow individuals to see the relevance, source and volume of information. Virtual worlds are context. But they are also really nothing more than vast data depositories. Why own the context when you can let others build that part, and you can own the data?

And finally, it’s interesting to note the timing of the OpenSocial API – they held it in the wings until they had tried other strategic moves. With their massive infrastructure, they may be sitting on a grab bag of applications and approaches to virtual worlds, waiting for some sort of shift in the market that lights the way to a winnable strategy.