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Google To Take On iTunes?
An anonymous reader writes 'Multiple sources say Google is preparing to launch Google Audio. According to people familiar with the matter, Google has been securing content from record companies. Is Google about to go head-to-head with Apple's iTunes?'
The Wall Street Journal's story says that the plan will allow people to buy FROM iTunes and Amazon. According to this version, Google is just providing a link to the music providers when it comes to the purchase. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704597704574487423504899680.html If you're not a WSJ subscriber, copy the first sentence of the article and Google it. The link from there will allow you to read the whole thing.
Unless Google abuses its dominant market position through anti-competitive actions, they should be allowed to do whatever they please. Antitrust laws protect the consumer from companies that abuse a monopoly position. Merely having a monopoly is not illegal.
Are you certifiably insane? They have no such monopoly. You can buy music all over the place, without DRM. I've been buying music on-line for years, and I think the last iTune I purchased was 2005. Heck, Amazon's downloader (native versions for Win, Mac and I think Linux) will download albums and add them to iTunes for you, utterly transparently, and they have since at least 2007, which is long time on the technology clock. In that time I've moved my entire music collection from Win, to Linux, to Mac, back to Win without so much as a blip.
Do they have a de facto monopoly on portable video solutions that actually work? I might give you that, but it's purely de facto. They aren't preventing others from entering the market or abusing market power. It's hardly Apple's fault that nobody else (except Pirate Bay) can do it correctly.
an alternative to itunes would be great, but it would have to sync non jailbroken iphones ipod touch / whatever comes next and apple clearly doesn't want any program other than itunes doing that. see palm.
Huh? I assume you're trying to reference Palm's Pre, but that whole debacle doesn't have anything to do with Apple devices syncing with non-Apple software.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Blackberry does fine syncing with iTunes. "See Palm" is a case study in asshattery. If Palm had used the iTunes sync APIs, or even if it just parsed the iTunes library XML, they'd be able sync without issue. Palm did it out of sloth, for publicity, and to get people like you to make comments like yours.
Ignorance and random Apple-bashing. How original.
Exactly, Google attained it's search monopoly naturally. Natural monopolies occur when there is no competition or one product is so superior that other competitors cannot come close to matching it. This is what happened with Google but they should still be monitored for abuse. Thus far google has maintained it's dominant market position naturally.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Its all ok to be dominant in a market. Whats not legal is to use it to squash competition like Microsoft does. In short, actions that promote a monopoly is ok, actions that denote competition isnt. If Google would stop indexing competitors services, refuse to run their ads or make sure their browser wouldnt work with Googles services then it would be illegal. Google has a really long way to go before they are even near average market etics and even longer path to become as evil as Microsoft is.
HTTP/1.1 400
Another example of "Sensational headlines sells", before this ./ post even went live more details became available that in fact this is about adding music to the search results and that the songs found can be played through iLike, last.fm, lala, etc.. and offer 'Click to buy' links to iTunes and Amazon.
So no, Google is not taking on iTunes or Amazon, in fact it will help sell their music.
That doesn't mean however this isn't a very nifty feature :)
Screenshots and more info are available at:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/google-to-partner-with-ilike-and-lala-for-new-music-service/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/google-music-service-the-screenshots/
This whole paragraph makes you sound like an absolute moron. First, you adjust the speed of scrolling through a list with the speed you move your thumb/finger. It sounds like you never figured this bit out.
:P
Yes good point. I did figure this out, but I was getting at what happens when you've run through the long list of songs and you want to hone in on the right one. If you spin it too fast, it goes over one song, then you spin it back and it goes below one song. Its easy to overshoot even if you do it slowly.
As for having to take the iPod out of your pocket to change tracks or adjust the volume, you're wrong again. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you press on "this" side of the block that it will skip forward a track, or if you press on "that" side of the block that you'll skip back a track.
Ok, you are right; I remembered this after I posted
As for volume, the capacitance worked through every shirt I ever tried it with.
Right again; however, I don't like having to second guess my volume by using an essentially analog switch that has no feedback on the min and max. If you have seperate volume buttons, you can easily calibrate your volume to the exact level you want, *without* taking the whole thing out of your pocket.
Lastly, my point is that with seperate buttons for most functions, you can navigate blindly through the pocket. With the Ipod, this just cannot be done. Try navigating a couple of folders up and down and then to the next folder for the precise artist you want, blindly. I could do this with my Creative Muvo in my pocket while I was running laps in the gym, or on the treadmill. Try that with the Ipod. Impossible.
(The same thing goes for Android: either trust the app store tied to your phone or compile the code yourself)
No, it doesn't. In Android I can load an .apk (android install package) from anywhere and install it on my device. The only caveat is that I must enable this functionality in some option menu, otherwise I get an error message suggesting me to enable said option if I want to install the application.
I disagree with you as far as the online music sales monopoly goes: Apple's real interest isn't in dominating the online music store business as much as it is maintaining dominance in the music player business. They want to sell iPods first, and the online store is merely an accessory. So no, I don't think Apple would retaliate by banning Google apps, especially if it could hurt sales of iPhones and iPods in any way. The music store is a valuable chess piece, but one Apple would sacrifice to protect the more important pieces on the board.
I would put forward that with the music player industry reaching saturation the focus is shifting from the iTunes store being a vehicle for selling iPods to the other way around. That is why they have been focused on adding more types of content to iTunes (tv shows, movies, etc).
That way they have repeatable sales to people who already have a device.
I thought the iTunes Music Stores predated Microsoft's Plays For Sure program.
Wikipedia seems to agree with me, as their iTunes history page states that iTunes Store support was added to iTunes in 2003, while Plays For Sure started in 2004.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
that doesn't make it a monopoly in a legal, or practical sense.
A sufficiently large market share may alone be enough for the company to be considered monopoly, at least in some jurisdictions. I'm not sure how it works in U.S., but in EU, for example, if you have a sufficiently large market share, onus is on you to prove that you're not a monopoly, and the harder your share is, the harder it is to prove.