Google is to offer a free service allowing users to create virtual rooms and visit them as animated forms called avatars, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The system will address one of the problems associated with Linden Labs' Second Life. Unlike the latter, Lively allows users to create virtual rooms that can be embedded in web sites and blogs.

The virtual spaces and avatars created with Lively will be hosted on Google's server systems - not on the servers run by other users or companies - like a built-in part of a web page. Visitors to these rooms can also view videos and other content running on other websites such as Google's Youtube, a feature not avaialble on some other services.

Google spokeswoman Sara Jew-Lim said Lively is fully integrated with the web. Google has no immediate plans to offer advertisements on Lively, and the source to make money from the service has also not been sorted out. X