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Digital
Google ready to launch MP3 service?
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 14 October 2011
Google is getting ready to launch an MP3 download service, according to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. There has been much speculation over the years, of course, that Google is about to launch some kind of digital music service – you know, one of those iTunes killers – but subsequent announcements, such as the since scrapped OneBox music search service and the more recent music-based digital locker offer, have always been a bit lacklustre.
When Google’s digital locker was in development there was speculation it would be accompanied by an MP3 store, so that the storage facility would work in sync with actual download sales, as Amazon and Apple’s digital lockers do. However no such element was present when Google rushed its locker to market earlier this year, possibly because the labels, who would need to licence an MP3 store, were pissed off that the web giant had decided no such licences were required for their locker (Amazon’s locker isn’t licensed either, of course, but the company already had an MP3 store to play with).
Both The Times and The Journal reckon the new Google-Tunes service will run alongside the digital locker. Whether that means that the web firm has now done a deal with the labels regarding its locker service too remains to be seen. Such a deal would likely enable Google to add a ‘scan and match’ element to the service (where the system replicates your music collection in the cloud without actually you having to upload most of your MP3s), something Apple’s iCloud will offer in the US from later this month, and an add-on service even Google and Amazon concede does require licences from the music firms.
Of course, for all the usually unproven talk of Google moving into iTunes territory, it’s worth remembering that, in YouTube, the company arguably already operates the number two online music service.
And talking of Google moving into other people’s territories, an interesting rant about the Google+ social network was doing the rounds yesterday, written by a Google employee. Steve Yegge – still getting used to Google+ himself – thought he was posting the rant to his colleagues, but it actually went public. Calling the firm’s latest attempt at social networking a “knee-jerk reaction”, Yegge wrote: “It’s predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work”.
He continued: “So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone. Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: ‘Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Let’s go contract someone to, um, write some games for us’. Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now? The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them. You can’t do that. Not really. Not reliably. There have been precious few people in the world, over the entire history of computing, who have been able to do it reliably. Steve Jobs was one of them. [But] we don’t have a Steve Jobs here. I’m sorry, but we don’t”.
While Google may be prone to knee-jerking, they are also known for being good employers, and it seems they’ve quickly assured Yegge there’s no hard feelings from management about him engaging in a slightly more public than intended debate about their latest social media efforts. So for Yegge it’s probably just as well Google “doesn’t have a Steve Jobs” – the famously secretive Apple chief probably would have fired him.
