Sometimes it feels like every news story you read is about Apple. If it’s not the iPhone or the phantom tablet, then it’s Steve Jobs’ health.
So to make up for it, today’s headlines are being hogged by Google. There was the first appearance of the much-hyped Android 2.0 on the Droid handset, not to mention what Techcrunch called a “killer app” for the new mobile software platform: a navigation service (see item below).
But that’s not all. In other Google news: the launch of Music Search, and efforts to appease the FCC.
It’s not a music service – honestly. Since news of its impending launch leaked last week, Google Music Search has been seen as an encroachment into the music business and a sign that Google really is a media company after all.
So with the official launch now upon us, it is no surprise that when I spoke to project management director RJ Pitman earlier today, he was at pains to point out that Google was not launching a music service. Definitely not. No way.
This seems valid – up to a point. A Google search for a song title, artist, album or even a fragment of a song’s lyrics brings up a box that invites the user to click a “play” button to hear the track – at least, for songs for which the rights are available (and the service is only available in the US). It makes more information readily accessible and furthers Google’s core mission.
The streaming is provided by two commercial services, MySpace and Lala, and there are also links to three other music services – Rhapsody, iMeme and Pandora (no iTunes, note). Google has no commercial relationship with these “partners”, insists Mr Pitman: they were selected purely on the basis of the completeness of their song catalogues and their ability to stream music to Google’s massive audience.
Yet there’s also no getting away from the fact that Google does perform some of the functions of the commercial music services it claims not to compete with. Take this explanation from Mr Pitman: “What it’s really about is just helping people figure out and identify and find the music they are looking for, and that should just be made a lot easier.”
That sounds a lot like discovery, which is a key step in the process that often leads users from sampling music to buying it. It’s an important part of services like, well, iTunes.
There are also clear similarities between Music Search and Google’s Book Search. The latter has developed a clearer commercial aspect: Google will hand off traffic to retailers of ebooks and take a percentage of any sale. It has even said it will make sales directly itself.
It would take a relatively minor adjustment to turn Music Search into a similar distribution system. Google may not be in the music business quite yet, but it has one foot in the door.
Appeasing the FCC. With Federal regulators breathing down its neck over the way its Voice service blocks calls to some numbers, and with competitors like AT&T making hay from its discomfort, Google has acted quickly to lessen the regulatory fall-out.
In a response to the FCC today, Google says it has reduced the numbers blocked from Google Voice to fewer than a hundred. All of these, it added, “we have good reason to believe are engaged in traffic pumping schemes” – that is, charging exorbitant interconnection rates.
But there was also an implicit admission that Google is unlikely to drop its blocking policies completely:
While we’ve developed a fix to address this problem, the bottom line is that we still believe the Commission needs to repair our nation’s broken carrier compensation system. The current system simply does not serve consumers well and these types of schemes point up the pressing need for reform.
Google is clearly learning the ways of Washington: that almost sounds like the special pleading of a good, old-fashioned telecom monopolist.
