While Apple Is Busy Trying To Be Facebook, Google Is Trying To Be Apple
It must be identity crisis week in the tech industry. No one wants to eat their own lunch anymore, the guy sitting next to you always has a jucier hamburger. This has been covered before, but Google wants to be Apple. Any everyone else. But primarily Apple. Allegedly, the search monster is in talks with music labels to release a service that competes with iTunes. The music industry is more than a little moist at the idea of a company large enough and tech savvy enough to take on Apple and do a better job than Sony, Coke and a number of other try-hards that couldn’t cut it. 70% of digital music is sold by Apple, mostly thanks to their “perfect circle” of devices and software. iTunes ain’t perfect, but there’s not really any other music player for Mac and Windows as slick, simple and efficient. This seems key to introducing a successful competitor to iTunes. Google loves web apps, so can we expect an online music repository? When we sync to our devices will we download from the internet every time? These questions are the reason Apple is currently king at this. The only real weaknesses in Apple’s approach don’t even come from Apple, they come from the music industry, whose only goal is to limit, restrict and prohibit.
