Slashdot Mirror
Google to Include iTunes?
Baher Al Hakim writes "The Street suggests in a recent article that Apple is about to announce a deal with Google to offer Apple's iTunes Music service through Google's site.
The rumored deal would pair the nation's leading online music store with its leading search engine." Update: 08/13 22:00 GMT by T : Truncation untruncated.
To a what? To award? To a degree? I don't know which is worse: duped stories or incomplete stories with no links. I know, the rest of the story is to be supplied in the dupe!
What has the editors of
Hey OSTG! I'll be a Slashdot editor! I wouldn't mind posting news worthy stories in my spare time. Certainly better than what we have now. Instead of Google's latest update, I'll post real stories. Stories such as:
- Hackers steal your phones to ring up bills
- New improved spyware tactics that behave like trojans
- Latest court rulings on hackers who use keyloggers
- Huge ID Theft Ring Affects at least 50 banks
If not me, than at least someone who can do a real editors job. I do believe I'm not going to renew my subscription if this kind of crap keeps on. With all do respect Taco, Slashdot use to be a great site, but now all it is good for is the latest $MARKETER plug with an occasional news story to keep us coming back.Oh, and EMAILING THE EDITOR SEEMS TO HAVE NO FUCKING AFFECT
</rant>
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
Uhhhhhhhhh. Where's the rest of the story? lol
If you can't say something nice, make sure you have something heavy to throw.
Reports from all over the street says that the well known submitt button is on the loose.
po
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
For some reason, it *really* annoys me when people link to their own blog instead of the link to the story. At the very least it ought to be obvious that it's a personal link rather than doing it on the sly.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
NO CARRIER
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
No doubt it will be edited but it was amusing while it lasted.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
http://www.thestreet.com/_googlen/tech/hardware/10 237939.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEN&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA
Shares of Apple Computer (AAPL:Nasdaq - commentary - research) set an all-time high on Friday following a disappointing report from Dell (DELL:Nasdaq - commentary - research) and amid rumors about a major new partnership.
According to market chatter, Apple is set to announce a deal with Google (GOOG:Nasdaq - commentary - research) calling for Google to offer Apple's iTunes music store through its own site. The rumored deal would pair the nation's leading online music store with its leading search engine.
There's "speculation of an iTunes launch," says Paul Foster, an options strategist at Theflyonthewall.com. "Google is going to offer iTunes somehow on their platform," according to the rumor, he says.
Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said the company doesn't comment on "rumors and speculation." A Google representative did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, Apple's shares might well have benefited from Dell's pain. The computer giant missed Wall Street's revenue targets for its just-completed quarter by $300 million and cautioned analysts that they needed to bring down their revenue targets for its current quarter.
Dell's stumble is in contrast to Apple, which has seen its computer sales and share in the PC market surge in recent quarters.
"Some investors seem be rotating out of Dell into Apple," says Foster. "Investors kind of have the attitude that Dell's weakness is Apple's strength."
Shares of Apple closed regular trading up $2.10, or 4.8%, on Friday to $46.10. The company's shares traded up as much as $2.22, or 5%, intraday. Volume totaled nearly 33 million shares, well above its three-month norm of 18.6 million shares.
Even Madlibs gives you the part of speech.
Is it me? Or are the aricle summaries is getting
Whoo, those lawyers are fast. Part of the article was removed moments after it was posted.
Did Apple file a lawsuit mid-submission or something?
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
http://www.thestreet.com/_tscs/tech/hardware/10237 939.html
"0101100101? It's just jibberish. *looks in mirror, gasps* 1010011010@!? AHHHHHH!!"
"What the hell I'm doing here."
http://www.michel.eti.br
http://www.technoogle.com/?p=114
Wall Street suggests in a recent Article that Apple is about to announce a deal with Google, to offer Apple's iTunes Music service through its site.
That's MAJOR news indeed.
If it turns out to be right, it would be a great deal for both sides, as Apple will gain a wider audience for its music service iTunes through the enormous base of Google visitors, and Google too will at last have a music service to offer, like Yahoo did a while ago.
No need for Google to start its own Music Service, they'll have the best Music Service by their side, what could be better than that.
This is very exciting cooperation between two of the biggest and most influential companies in the Tech World, and it has never crossed my mind, until now.
Let's wait and see.
"The problem with our economy is that our budget is balanced by people who aren't" - A.E.N.
Google including iTunes would be a great move, especially considering what they've done with Google Video. They could m
http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/tech/hardware/1023 7939.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA
Thanks for my good friend, view source.
the article was slashdotted?
I don't get it. Do the eds not use the preview feature, and if not, do they not at least check the home page once in awhile? I've given them the benefit of doubt for quite some time, but come on... This one seems a little obvious.
Doesn't it seem like the quality of posts have gotten worse since they added the plum where you can see articles in the Mysterious Future and report bad ones??
That's good, right?
I blame this article on the freeloaders. If you subscribed to /., you could have seen this "article" earlier and submitted the error to the mods. I'm sure they would have corrected it. Just like they catch the dupes. Or something.
I was not touched there by an angel.
"Baher Al Hakim writes "The Street suggests in a recent article that Apple is about to announce a deal with Google, to a"
Wow! The submitter of the story stopped at the same place all the commentors would have stopped at.
"Derp de derp."
If you view the source, this link exists, with no anchor text....
Nice one, eds.
Don't just leave us hanging!!!!
The bottom quote kinda fits; "If at first you don't succeed, redefine success." Or in this case, redefine editor.
home
...to a broken/blocked keyboard maybe ?
Wall Street != TheStreet.com AFAICT.
The Television Wiki
Yes, once again its another editor fuckup - why is everyone still so surprised that this happens? The 'editors' barely pay lip service to their title and I doubt very much that they read the comments either. At face value there is no real passion from the creators of the site - its just the same old shit day after day.
To explain further, Slashdot exists for one purpose: to make money for parent company OSDN. There is nothing wrong with that in itself but don't expect a high quality site the way its currently run. The Slashdot business model (if you can call it that) seems to be to provoke reaction from the loyal crowd of slashbots that frequent the site. Inflammatory / trollish stories (e.g here) and dupes cause the page hits (and therefore ad revenue) to go through the roof.
As a result, most of the comments I see on the stories are neither insightful, interesting or informative. There seems to be no real balanced discussion - something I feel is a product of the moderation system which rewards those who conform to the slashbot mindset and censors everything else. This democratic method of editing the comments is terrible - especially where technical issues are concerned, as a lot of nonsense is modded up by people who don't know otherwise.
You are probably wondering why I read Slashdot. Partly morbid curiosity and partly to laugh at both the flame wars which invevitably break out and the well crafted trolls.
To conclude, Slashdot is neither really "News for Nerds" nor is it "Stuff that matters". If you want the former, go to somewhere like arstechnica or kuroshin and if you want actual stuff that matters, the BBC are hard to beat.
This is ridiculus. Half the story is missing and what I see does not make sense. Yet, the parent gets modded down for a story that makes no sense.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
finaly we dont have to rtfa and have someone yell at us!
From the page's source:
to aa href="http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/tech/hardwa
Oh, no! I get it! THEY GOT HIM! Somebody stuck him with a stake through the heart! Oh, this is so sad! CmdrTaco... I pine for you.
Hi, everybody. In memoriam of poor 'Taco, let's go back and revisit a few of my favorite 'Taco memories.
Oh, that was great. And who could forget this one?
Ah, we sure had some great times 'Taco. I'm gonna miss you bro.
Oh no, I get it. THEY GOT HIM!!! Somebody stuck him with a stake through the heart! Oh, this is so sad! Oh Trevor, I pine for you.
99% of the desktop users have access to Itunes already. And even desktop linux users can run it via crossover. There has to be more to this story then just an online version of itunes.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
"Truncation untruncated."
Finally I can sleep at night knowing what the whole artical is about.
Google are the first source for most web site (through their search engine)
They want to be the main source of maps
They are the amin source of email for lots of people
They want to be the source of books
Looks like they want to be the main source of music
Scary.
A friend has a huge database of songs he bought from iTunes and they all sound a little off to me. I thought it was the speakers, or the equalizer at first.
But then I did a comparison of songs I had aquired by other means, and there is a definite difference in the sound quality; the itunes songs sound annoying (its hard to pin down exactly why, but its akin to sounding tinny).
I even converted my songs to the itunes format thinking the format was the issue. But they still sound good, while the downloaded songs he downloaded on itunes still sound bad.
Am I on crack or has anyone else noticed this?
I've been interested in legal music downloads for a while, and have used iTunes once or twice. But I don't like the UI on iTunes, which seemed like it was just running a web browser in the window anyway.
If this means I can browse the iTMS and sample audio from within Mozilla, awesome! If it's just integrating Google's search engine into the iTunes software, I couldn't care less.
You should be thankful that this site isn't like the forums at GameFAQs.com. While the moderation system here isn't perfect, at least it doesn't take censorship to the GameFAQs forums extreme. At least here you can view every post that has been made, unlike at GameFAQs, where any post that the moderators dislike is permanently removed.
I'd take the semi-democratic method of moderation used here over the dictatorial, elitist system used at a place like GameFAQs any day.
While your post may be moderated down, at least others will still be able to read it months and years from now. Unlike at GameFAQs, where it would probably be long gone already, inaccessible to all, forever.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
One of the things I could see google offer is the ability to search for songs by lyrics and additional meta data. I know a lot of times when I purchase music via itunes and I don't know the actual name of the song the first thing I do is search for "lyrics" followed by the phrase from the song.
The P/E ratio is the ratio between the current share price and the earnings that Apple issued on each share.
If there is a high P/E ratio, it is AFAIK likely to be down to investors believing that the company will in the future improve on its earnings. The improvement in earning might take some years to foster, but when they do that P/E ratio will come down. I find it hard to believe that Apples' share price is high "because they're fashonable". Most shares are held by pension companies (or at least they are in the UK), and not individual investors. These pension companies employ people to research companies and determine whether to invest their clients money.
However, this would not explain the dot-com boom. I really don't know much about the stock market and its workings but want to know more. It seems to be a strange closed off world.
Given their hacked open-source video player, and Google's buying of other products and services (keyhole, picasa, blogger) doesn't partnering with iTunes run astray from that precedent?
Or to google is this a step one to direct to consumer e-commerce by partnering with e-retailers to become a digital wares version of Amazon?
for apple it makes sense. One of the keys to getting more iTunes users is to help drive two things, at least: iPod sales and Quicktime adoption--particularly related to the latest vid and audio codecs. Apple would be in in for hardware sales and format saturation basically. Since they don't make boocoop profits from iTunes track sales beyond mindshare and marketshare, an alleged partnership with a diverse number of big players in various markets makes sense.
But, for Google...let's just hope that prior to the deal sales and marketing info garnered from iTunes isn't part of the deal for the all seeing G. You can be sure that the info gathered from post partnership would be of great interst to the all seeing G. For adsense reasons and whatever else it is that company does.
Or, "The government censors you."
Whichever...
Discussion System prefs link: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If thats the case why didnt he type arrgggh?
From what I've seen in the comments so far, all one has to do for a karma boost is not finish their comm
When added to the video iPod rumours, it seems to make more sense for Google to tie in with Google Video.
As part of the spin that Apple might do when explaining the reversal on Steve Jobs' "no video" decree. Google Video is a distribution mechanism well suited to short video snippets, just the thing if you were watching it on a small screen, or carrying someplace to watch on a connected monitor. The iPod also has a DRM mechanism built in. Since the DRM scheme is one linked to a portable device, it might be less annoying than one linked to your desktop PC.
I can't picture the benefit for Apple or Google when only audio is involved. But video seems to make more sense.
No, it's more like this: "In Soviet Russia, the governm
Circumcision is child abuse.
If I were Microsoft or one of the companies who use MS in some form (for example audio format like WMA), then i'd probably be shitting (pardon my french) bricks.
Pairing up the worlds most popular music service with the worlds most popular search engine is definitely a clever move by both parties, it can only serve to improve their customer bases. A symbiotic relationship if you will.
I am no expert, but I think the problem lies with the record labels who submit the songs to the ITMS and don't check the information, not Apple.
Sound waves should be free!
And marry the two best-liked/recognized brands in the world. Jobs is THE MAN. And the guys running Google's brand strategy for Page and Brin are pretty sharp, too.
--
make install -not war
a deal with Apple at the castle AAahaahhaaaaaa...
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
Why do you morons keep modding up every incomp
Apple stock seems a little overweight
Many investors look at the P/E vs. expected growth. If a company is growing 30% a year, then a trailing P/E of 38 isn't so bad. I believe Apple is growing closer to 15% but they still have a lot of potential market share to grab, are run efficiently, have great products, and great management (not just Jobs) so I'm comfortable with a P/E of 38.
Also you should compare with companies that are similar. HP and IBM are totally different companies so I don't think I'd compare either of those to Apple. Dell doesn't have Apple's style or target market, but it's probably a better comparison. Maybe Sony's electronics devision, if you can split it off from other parts of Sony, is a good comparison as well.
I personally feel the price is a little high at 46. I might not buy it now unless I'm looking out more than 10 years. However I'm a long-term investor and have been holding Apple since it was less than $10 per share, split-adjusted. (I recently sold a teeny sliver of my holdings and bought a 17-inch PB, heh.)
Anyway, my point is that their stock only went up because they're fashionable
No, the price went up because that's the price buyers and sellers agreed on. No other information can be gleaned by day-to-day swings in price. Don't even try.
I have a personal rule, I don't talk about trends in a company's stock price in any timeframe shorter than 5 years.
If you own Apple stock, start thinking about an exit strategy - at the very least make sure you have a trailing stop at $3 to $5 (7% to 10%) below peak price to protect your gains so you don't forfeit everything if the stock falls back to the $20 to $30 range in a few months.
"Exit strategy?" "Trailing stop"?" This is trader bullshit. Sorry you don't understand a thing about the stock market. Buy good companies and hold them as long as you can. Do you trade and set trailing stops with your other assets? Your car? Furniture? Art? Heirlooms? Your house? Don't do it with stock assets.
Only 25% of active "consumer" traders (the ones who trade frequently but AREN'T working on wall street) beat the market after taxes and commissions (heard it on Motley Fool).
In other words, you can do better by putting all your money in VTI or a similar instrument, reinvesting dividends via DRIP, and doing nothing after that. Not as exciting and when your friends spew bullshit about "trading strategy" you'll have nothing to say, but you'll have a shitload more in the bank 20 years from now.
The announcement comes just after a week of Yahoo releasing http://news.com.com/Yahoo+hears+call+of+audio+sear ch/2100-1026_3-5818480.html/ their Audio Search, http://audio.search.yahoo.com/
/. ? this just doesnt work <URL:http://blahblah>anchor text</URL>
I guess Yahoo beat Google on this.. but Google will double-cross Yahoo by integrating with worlds best music service, iTunes ! Bravo Google !
PS: can anybody teach me how the heck url formatting works in
And I, for one, welcome our new
Look, there's enough corporate/government fascism out there to get fired up about. Any look at my posting history shows there's no shortage of it, or outrage from me. But 1> this move has nothing to do with the government, so it's hardly fascism. And it's a branding play. Which is how any group, whether corporate, government, religion, sports, or anything else that millions/billions of people do together, manage to do it. Branding is the only way that we humans, with our relatively crude communications skills (relative to our needs), have to relate to one another in those numbers. Meanwhile, some individuals, like Steve Jobs, have mastered the game of communicating 1:N, where "1" is Jobs, and "N" is humanity. Come up with something to replace it that doesn't take a corporation, with all its fearsome baggage, and criticise it. Until then, keep a sense of proportion.
--
make install -not war
and Microsoft, right?
I think that google should make their own music service. It would put pressure on iTunes to make their service better. Also it would (probably) lower prices. Don't you just love Capitalism?
I like happy endings, you Insensitive Cl
Here's a keeper:
Slashdot continued to gain users. And with more users came more load. On several occasions we broke 25.00. Who knew that sendmail shuts off once you break 25.00? -Rob Malda
HJ
Not everyone is hyped about the iTunes service. Therefore I hope Google will make it possible for users to include iTunes hits. Otherwise this deal results in instant degraded search results for a lot of users (those not interested in itunes).
Personally I despise the service for one major reason. The quality of the purchased sound SUCKS! To be fair and giving Apple *some* credit, the packaging (the application with it's simple user interface and it's preview functionality) is nice. However the wares being sold is of lousy quality and the primary point of iTunes was selling sound (at least what I though).
I also wonder if the EU has a case against Apple for errecting trade barriers. Not all songs are made available to all member countries of the EU which is another thing deeply disturbing to me (some songs for ex. available in the UK store are not available in the German).
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
You might find it interesting that Slashdot, along with an information sciences grad student at the University of Michigan, conducted a poll of UMich slashdot readers. The poll appeared at the top of the slashdot front page to those viewing from a "umich.edu" subnet a few months ago. I forget the specifics, but it asked a bunch of questions like "Do you think the moderation system affects the content of comments?" and implied that the slashdot editors were seriously considering the final data.
Who knows if it will effect anything new though. If there's one thing I've noticed with the editors after 6 years of reading, it's that they're very conservative with how they manage their site. They don't like change, for better or for worse.
Goooogleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, I got a screenshot/mockup for anyone curious I think there's a fair chance this is accurate.
Two chicks walk into a bar
Me: "That tune that goes 'tum te tum badda badda tum tum"
Google (I'm feeling lucky): "Buy 'Pink Floyd: The Wall' from iTunes Music Store Now!"
Contribute to the online videogame encyclopedia: GamerWiki
ARTHUR: There! Look!
LAUNCELOT: What does it say?
GALAHAD: What language is that?
ARTHUR: Brother Maynard! You are a scholar.
MAYNARD: It's Aramaic!
GALAHAD: Of course! Joseph of Arimathea!
LAUNCELOT: 'Course!
ARTHUR: What does it say?
MAYNARD: It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of aaarrrrggh'.
ARTHUR: What?
MAYNARD: '...The Castle of aaarrrrggh'.
BEDEVERE: What is that?
MAYNARD: He must have died while carving it.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, come on!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what it says.
ARTHUR: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aarrggh'. He'd just say it!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what's carved in the rock!
GALAHAD: Perhaps he was dictating.
Uh, the nation's leading search engine and online music store? Both of these are global. This may be Apple - who have email in their en-US dictionary but not their en-GB, but technology's everywhere, man!
I have complained with Apple that iTunes searching capacity it not what it should be. Often, I know a fragment of lyrics, and I'd like to be able to search for that. Or I know that the song I like is in Italian and a hit in a particular period in a particular country (a couple of years ago there was a summer hit here in the Netherlands, and I'd love to buy it).
Plus, it'd be nice if one could have an interface (Garageband), where laymen like me could recreate a musical fragment, and search for that.
If Apple/record companies want me to buy songs, will they please help me do it?
Bert
Oh, and there is one more thing: Research exists that can quite successfully predict what bands/music you like if you like based on input consisting of your preferences. Now, iTunes has all my music, and it even contains ratings. Now why can't I get suggestions (only when *I* ask, please) for other music? Both "times played" and "rating" give even more clues for accurate predictions.
Wonderful. Just what Slashdot needs: an article for both the Google and Apple fanboys to rant about...
The iTunes store is not a webapp (even if it uses some web-ish technologies underneath). You have to download a large platform-specific application and install it.
Admittedly Google is getting into this kind of thing too with Picasa, but they have shown a strong preference for real (AJAX) web applications.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Google AdWords iTunes and Google have teamed up to create a special offer exclusively for iTunes signed labels. Purchase keyword advertising from Google and get a one-time promotional discount when you link to your music on iTunes.
Yahoo Audio Search already links to iTunes and various other services (which also gives Yahoo a convenient opportunity to show that Yahoo! Music Unlimited only charges $0.79 per track).
The following are my favorite ways a Google/Apple partnership could be implemented:
- Lyric search with links to iTMS for purchase
- AdWords like contextual ads so when you are searching for Michael Jackson accquital news, you get links to buy "Thriller".
- Integrated Gmail recommendation system to suggest music to friends
- maps.iTunes.Google.com where you could find concerts in your area or by band and buy them only, complete with driving directions
- satellite version of the above
- hybrid maps/satellite version of the above
- 3D satellite model called "iTunes Earth" that would allows mapping of all instances of a particular song being played at that time around the world. Would be tied directly to NORAD to target high concentrations of bad pop like number one iTunes song "Just the Girl"
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
I imagine having access to Apple's well catalogued and metatagged library of mp3s could lead to some very cool search technology from google. "Hum a tune, we'll tell you what it is, and then sell it to you", for example. Also, some of those geeks at google must be wanting to put all of that music into a computer, analyse it, and then churn out their own top 40 songs in seconds hehe (they should be easy). Or "how about a bit of jazz/reggae/bluegrass fusion tonight?" - just put in the keywords and out pops a (possibly terrible) tune. :)
sig under construction...
It has been known for some time now that most Slashdotters don't get through the first sentence of a topic's blurb, and as such all subsequent text is being removed to save on printing costs.
it's hardly spyware it's just waste my cpu time with unnecessary background processes-ware many stupid programs do this
Interesting. Without dates on the pages I can't tell how long the iTunes/Google Ad-words deal has been in effect. Could that be the news? Or has it been around for a while?
This implication of TheStreet.com is that there may be something even tighter, perhaps along the lines of "Look up a song, receive a link to iTunes at the top of the page (rather than in the adwords ads)". Sort of like Google's other special features (offering business info, almanac, calculator, etc. for certain queries.)
If so that would be hot, but very unusual for Google; they're usually determinedly non-partisan.
I am not sure sure about them offering iTunes through a Google interface with how protective Apple is with their intellectual copyrights and like of control. I'm thinking maybe it would tie into Google's ad system somehow, and point you to iTunes when you search for a song. And perhaps a means to search through the iTunes music store through google. The idea of Apple allowing iTunes music to be sold any way other then though the iTunes software is highly unlikely.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Is now at the highest ever, that's right it's higher than 1999 and 2000, it is higher than the peaks of the tech mania. Anyone think it might be overvalued hmmm? Naaah, go buy some. lol
I wonder how this would work and I speculate how Google would integrate iTunes into their offering. Perhaps Google would offer iTunes through something similar to their Adsense program. That would allow Apple to build a presence on numerous websites. Google would then get a referral from Apple for each song that leads to a sale. That's just me speculating. It will be interesting to see what happens with this potential partnership
http://switchtoamac.blogspot.com/
Did everyone forget about google wallet? Mix that with itunes. Now you convert itunes into a web services (I hate the software) and you can use google to make micropayments.
Microsoft just filed for the patent claiming rights over the "technique by which a user may access a music downloading store via an internet search client" in one aspect, and in another aspect "the technique by which an internet search client may provide access to a music downloading service".