Official Google Australia Blog: Build: Bringing LEGO bricks to Chrome

Australia Blog

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Build: Bringing LEGO bricks to Chrome

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

We love building with LEGOR bricks. We loved it as kids, and we still love it now. Visit any Google office, you’re going to see LEGO bricks all over the place. So it’s with childish delight that today we can announce Build. Over the last few months we’ve been working with LEGO Australia, thinking about what would happen if we brought bricks to the browser. Build is the result: our latest Chrome Experiment which lets you explore and build a new world of LEGO creations together online. With 8 trillion bricks, think of Build as the largest LEGO set you’ve ever seen.

Build may look simple, but this collaborative 3D building experience would not have been possible a couple of years ago. It shows how far browser technology has come and how the web is an amazing platform for creativity. We made the bricks with WebGL, which enables powerful 3D graphics right in the browser and demonstrates the upper limit of current WebGL graphics performance. We then mixed in Google Maps (another Aussie invention) so you can put your creation in a LEGO world alongside everyone else’s.

Right now Build is an experiment we’ve been working on in Sydney. We’re launching first in Australia and New Zealand and hope to open up in other countries soon. This year is the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick in Australia and Build joins the celebration of the LEGO Festival of Play online.

Over the next few weeks and months we hope to see you fill the Build world up with everything from medieval castles to sea snakes, giant mouse cursors to smiling monsters and even a Kiwi! Share your creations with us on +Google and we’ll re-post the most inventive.

You can start building at buildwithchrome.com.

Posted by Lockey McGrath, Product Marketing Manager, Google Australia and New Zealand