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Napster To Be Acquired by Google?
YesSir writes "The New York Post claims that Google is considering an alliance or possibly an acquisition of Napster. Rather then starting their own, Google could jump start their music service with the help of Napster. Napster's share price soared more than 30 percent as a result of the report that they are in discussions with Google." From the article: " The company in January told Reuters that it was not on the block. 'The company is not looking to be sold, the management is not looking to step out. It's simply not true,' a Napster spokesman said on Jan. 23. Last week, Napster, founded by college student Shawn Fanning and was once synonymous with the pirating of music, laid off 10 managers." More information available from C|Net. Update: 01/31 19:16 GMT by Z : A Reuters article has Google denying that it has plans to acquire Napster or start a music store anytime soon.
Napster, founded by college student Shawn Fanning, as far as I can tell doesn't really exist any more. AFAIR Roxio bought it because they had a brand that meant "mediocre software" and wanted a brand/name that meant "cool".
Coming to a GNu world gnear you! You can google your songs, google your bands, you can even joing mygooglespace to talk to people and we will watch everything you do so we can recommend gnew music to you as well!
We gnow what you gneed
This "Napster" is not the company founded by Shawn Fanning. This is the company that was formerly known as Roxio that sold off all of their software assets to Sonic and then hired Shawn Fanning and bought the name Napster.
This company has been mismanaged from the moment it was spun off from Adaptec. This would not surprise me in the least, but unfortunately it is probably a really good move for the current Napster folks. They will make out like bandits.
Google already came out and denied any involvement with napster, according to this
Is it just me, or can you not go a day on Slashdot without hearing that google is trying to reach into a new market?
I'm already ahead of the curve; I have faced the inevitable and sewn "Google" into the tag on my underwear.
So what will this new service be named. Noogle? Gnapster? Goopster? Goosic(As in Google Music)? Or the best combination og Music+Google: Moogle!
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
The napster acquisition is further down the list. Next up is Cisco after they've acquired Nintendo. The whole shebang will be paid for after the Goobuntu Vista project comes to fruition.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Google said: "We have no plans to acquire Napster, nor do we have plans to develop a music store at this time." 13:01 EST
Is this only news because Google is supposedly not buying Napster?
How is Napster even relevant anymore?
Raise your hand if you use Napster's service.
Now everyone who has iTunes, raise your hand.
Napster was the first on the market with a pay-for-music service and they still couldn't turn that into a leading position.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This reminds me of the spending spree done by tech companies during the stock price boom of the late 90's. Google has now found themselves with a shit load of cash, and they figure they better do something with it before people realise how overvalued the stock is.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Napster, founded by college student Shawn Fanning...
He must be having trouble chossing a major. I suggest something involving computers.
Seems google is about to buy everything.
Google CEO visits Vatican. Share price in Catholicism rocket.
It's been, like, thirty minutes since the last Google story and I was really starting to Jones out.
Thanks for the Google fix.
Hey editors...if you're going to insist on a news story every time someone from Google gets up and makes a peanut butter sandwich, can you at least give us a Digest version?
You know...instead of 3 (or more- it's only lunchtime so far) stories a day about Google, ONE Googleback?
If you think I'm joking, you're right. What I really want is a section for just Google, so that I can click the "NOT ON MY HOMEPAGE" checkbox.
While you're at it, I'd also like a "web logs" section, so that I can block crap like "Boing-Boing gets a scary letter from a 15 year old kid who 'called the FBI on them for harassment on the intar-web'".
Please help metamoderate.
I don't know how this all got mixed up, but I am closely involved in Google's next acquisition. To bring all of these silly rumors to rest I am proud to formally announce that Google is going to buy my WANG.
That's right, it will be by invite only in it's beta stage next week.
When the iTunes store first opened, a lot of people at /. bitched and moaned about how terrible it was that you were forced to buy individual songs or albums. Who would want to do that when you can pay a monthly fee and listen to everything in the catalog with a subscription service?
As it turns out, a lot of people actually.
The "all you can eat" method sounds great in theory, but the tracks from the major subscription services are often saddled with layers of rules and restrictions well beyond those you find with iTunes. Extra fees for moving them to portable music devices, extra fees for burning them to CDs and oh yeah...when you stop paying your monthly fee, everything goes away. Hundreds of dollars over years gone with one missed payment. All that money and you own absolutely *nothing*.
iTunes is not perfect, iTunes has problems. The artists do get far, far less than they should, but that is due to the way the contracts are written between the labels and the artists. Yes, you are restricted to playing (but not storing) the songs to any 5 computers at once (which you can change as often as you like). No, Steve Jobs can't lower the prices to 10 cents a track like you so often hear the uninformed claim. Yes, you can put the songs on as many iPods as you want without restriction. No, you can't get higher-bitrate tracks even though that should be an option. Etc.
At the end of the day, however...you can buy one song for 99 cents and that song will be there for you to play today, tomorrow and next year, the year after, etc. Wherever you want, whenever you want. You can buy that one song, buy 1,000 songs it doesn't matter. You only pay when you want to pay, and you don't feel compelled to justify what you spend each month, because unlike Napster and the Yahoo! Music Store, you only get what you pay for, and you only pay for what you get.
The dominance of the iPod, and its incompatibility with the other services is only part of the reason iTunes' competition is withering on the vine. People want to feel like they are left with something at the end of the day, and iTunes delivers that better than anyone else.
Google buys the Library of Congress. They change the name to glibc.