MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (Hypebot) – iTunes Gets A Worthy Competitor.
A series on announcements this week at Google's I/O developer conference could signal another seismic shift in how music is discovered, purchased and enjoyed.
Google's most direct foray into music comes via the announcement that it had purchased Simplify Media two months ago, and will incorporating its technology in a new version of Android that enables users to stream music directly from their home PCs. That's a very different approach than MP3Tunes, Spotify or Apple's soon to be defunct Lala and others who have focused on storing music in the cloud.
Just as importantly Google announced that a new upgrade for Android will enable over the air downloads and auto-synch to all Android powered devices. No word yet, if Google is opening its own music store or just opening its system to Amazon and others. Either way, it is a direct challenge to iTunes.
