Lego + Chrome = Hours of joyful procrastination

This is ridiculously cool. Eight-trillion Lego blocks and they’re all yours, just sitting there waiting for you on Google Chrome.

Google partnered with Lego Australia to create Lego Build, a Chrome Experiment “which lets you explore and build a new world of LEGO creations together online”

As Google’s product marketing manager, for Australia and New Zealand Lockey McGrath explains, a number of technologies went into bringing Lego Build to life:

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.

At the moment, people can only build on virtual plots in Australia and New Zealand, although it hopes to open up in other countries soon.

Here’s what I managed to build while I was writing this article: