Google vs Apple – Round 2

No need to stress out the “Digital War” Google has been engaged against Apple for a few months now. While everyone agree on the key to success of Apple’s hardware – a million iPad sold in only a months, the brand now seems to give a new face to the global strategy, heading for the web. But in Google’s backyard, we don’t laugh with competition, do we ?

The war has been made on three different battlefronts so far:
// Android VS iPhone
// Browsers & Operating system
// Web music services

As far as the two first battlefronts belong to Round 1, I am more going to analyze the third battlefront so as not to be too wordy. However, if you’d like to know more about the two first points, I do recommend you to read this article.

Will the war on web music services be engaged this summer ?

Can you remember all the buzz Google made around the launch of its web music service last october 2009 ? The Google Music Search, launched only in the US on Oct.28th 2009 has not manage to compete with Apple’s iTunes though. Much ado about nothing ?
There is no gainsaying that iTunes is today and probably tomorrow (cf to my last post) the unbeatable music store in a highly competitive industry, even if Spotify is finally going to enter the US market soon.
Google already launched a web music service in 2008 in China. I used to download full albums when I was living in Shanghai – Jul.09 to Feb.10. The web music service Google China developped was but very basic. The idea they had for the US Google Music Search was slightly different. Indeed, Google just improved the search when it comes to music, dealing with partners such as Lala.com or even iLike. Thus you’d be able to directly listen to previews of your song from one of those partners. Clever business strategy for Google ? For sure, as it was not that risky financially speaking. Plus let’s not forget that Google makes and has always made business on ads, which is not the case for Apple, even if they recently bought the Quattro Wireless Agency, which was nothing but a godsend at a time Google’s web advertising monopoly was being requestionned.

Google’s first move into the Digital Music Industry is still noticable, for I’m pretty sure they have stronger cards to play in this game. They did Nexus One to compete with the iPhone, who says they won’t develop their own Gtunes ? As we are now moving into a “Web computing” system, Google plays at home. While Apple will probably enter the web music market this summer – let’s see what happens on June 7th – business cards may change considerabily for when it comes to the Web, Google makes the rules.

Even if I am not convinced today a possibly “Gtunes” could overthrown “iTunes” from a day to another, I strongly believe however that the Digital Music Market is about to change considerabily. Everyone knows there’s not going to be enough pieces in the whole cake. So you better eat yours and get fat as soon as you can Mr iTunes!