Google Music (Beta) vs Apple’s iTunes?

Looks like Google’s adding some finishing touches to their ‘rumored’ online digital store.

There’s no doubt that Google’s product portfolio is immense, there’s social networking, internet search, operating systems, consumer software, maps, web browsers, hardware, advertising… and the list goes on. The only thing that’s missing in Google’s product portfolio is an online music download store, Google Music Beta is there to fill in for the most part but it doesn’t let you purchase/download MP3′s, it just lets you listen to over 20,000 tracks online — for now that is.

Google Music, search engine's new product that will compete against Apple.

There have been multiple reports claiming that Google will be launching a music download service within the next few weeks but Google’s yet to confirm what they’re hiding up their sleeves. According to Engadget, AsiaD’s Senior Vice President Andy Rubin has made it quite clear that Google is indeed “very close” to introducing a digital download store that’ll include “a little twist.”, “It won’t just be buying songs for 99 cents”.

Also, some reports are claiming that this new online store from Google is directly linked to the seemingly bland Music Beta service that Google is currently pushing through, which comes to no surprise since it was their first step in venturing the online music business in the first place.

It’s worth noting that Google has already encountered problems with numerous recording labels and music publishers in the past (during the launch of the Music Beta), simply because they weren’t happy with Google’s previously proposed locker-type storage service which rendered the Music Beta service ‘lacking’  since the day of its launch, they’re also yet to obtain music licensing agreements with the record companies music publishers alike. Google has also been previously hit by a multi-million dollar lawsuit with Bedrock Computer Technologies as well as Apple (Indirectly) — both cases are related to patent infringement, so naturally, they no longer want to go through the same problems again.

Numerous reports are also stating that Google will be introducing their new digital download service to the public ahead of the Apple iTunes Match launch which, will be held by the end of this month. Will Google be able to successfully execute the service this time? How will Apple react to Google’s new offering? We’re yet to find out.

Quoted from POP Herald