As reported in Rolling Stone, Google is in "very preliminary" talks with executives in the record business to launch a new music service to compete with Apple’s dominant iTunes, according to a source at a major record label and recent media reports. Although The Wall Street Journal reported a service linked to Google’s search engine could open by the end of this year, with a subscription service in early 2011, sources say it’s pure speculation. "Maybe [they’re] thinking, ‘Look, iTunes won the online-music battle, but nobody has claimed the wireless one,’ " says the major-label source. "They’re going head-to-head with Apple and the iPhone. What better way to do it than with music?"
The new Google service, many predict, is likely to allow iTunes or Windows Media Player users to stream their entire online libraries to Android phones. So rather than transferring songs one-by-one from their computers to their phones, or subscribing to streaming services such as Rhapsody or Spotify, users will be able to access thousands of their own downloads via any player. "We think users are going to love this feature," the company’s vice president of engineering, Vic Gundotra, said last month, during a demonstration at the Google I/O developers’ conference. However, Google spokespeople wouldn’t say when the feature would be available.
