Jordan Kahn:
> After launching its new Google Play All Access music streaming service earlier this month at Google I/O, Google’s head of Android Sundar Pichai just confirmed during his interview at the D11 conference that the service will be making its way to iOS. Sundar said the service would be available on iOS in the next few weeks.
This is going to get interesting.
Remember how Google sent Microsoft that cease and desist letter because Microsoft made a YouTube app, but cut out the ads? Well, Larry Page went on stage at Google I/O preaching about how being “negative is not how we make progress,” and “not every new technology is zero-sum.”
> Eight years after Google launched Maps as a beta product, the search giant is reinventing the map for a new data rich web that lives on fast broadband, and runs on computers with oomph to spare.
Glad to see it.
Jon Seff for Macworld:
> Like Spotify and its ilk, All Access offers millions of tracks (although Google didn’t say how many millions, or which music labels for that matter) for streaming on Android phones and tablets, as well as from a Web browser. And in the process, Google has also taking a big swing at its Android app partners like Spotify, Rdio, and Rhapsody.
It seems suspicious to me that Google won’t tell us which music labels they have or how many songs they have. That immediately leads to the assumption that it’s not that good.
I’m not at all surprised that Google is taking a swing at its competitors. The third-party app developers and services are making money from Google’s operating system and users — it makes sense that Google would want to cash in on some of that.
> Turning back to the browser, Pichai said that Chrome now has 750 million active monthly users—an increase of 300 million users from last year. Much of that growth is happening on phones and tablets: Chrome works on both Android and iOS, and Pinchai stressed that its goal is to “move the mobile Web forward.”
It will be interesting to see what Google is going to do with Chrome, but I did see it as an operating system alternative right now.