Google will synchronise the music to a Google Music library in such a way that the playlist will remain the same on all devices, be it a laptop, mobile phone or tablet. Each user will be able to store upto 20,000 songs for free, but they will have to be manually uploaded.

Music can also be purchased from a music store in the Android Market. Over 13 million tracks from the big music companies like Sony, EMI and Universal will be available to buy, in addition to tracks from several independent labels.

Google Music on an Android mobile

Individual artists who have the necessary permissions will also be able to upload their music and build their own artist page through the artist hub interface.

This service will obviously compete with Apple’s iTunes. The cost of each track on Google Music will be the same as that on iTunes, ranging between $0.69 and $1.29. However, the cloud computing service by Google will be free, whereas Apple charges $25 for it.

While Google may not generate a lot of revenue through this service, it will help them build customer loyalty to Android-based mobile phones. Once a user has purchased music from a particular service like Apple or Google, they are unlikely to switch to another device.

The service will provide some music for free everyday, and those tracks will be displayed in the music library. Amazon also offers free tracks daily, but the service is rather complicated.

Google Music has already been integrated into Google+ and that will make it more popular as it can now be shared with friends. Social aspects of Google Music could be the main driver of its success, as it could potentially out-shine popular services such as Spotify and Last.fm primarily due to its larger user base.

Reviews of the service are lukewarm. A lot of the criticism focuses on the fact that the service has been released 8 years later than iTunes. The service also requires users to upload each and every song they wish to store and can create problems when users upload old iTunes tracks that had DRM encryption.

The biggest plus points in favour of Google Music are the price – free! – and the true portability of the service – it can be played on any device, incuding iPhones and iPads.

Most industry experts, though, recognise the Google Music service for what it is – a suitable replacement for the iTunes eco-system for Android devices and a means to complete and tether the Android user experience.

Obviously, Google must think they can get more out of Hulu than the other companies – they wouldn’t want to buy yet another video hosting site and then struggle to monetise it, would they?

It has been reported by the Financial Times that Amazon, Yahoo! and Dish Network have offered between $1.5 billion and $2 billion to Hulu in exchange for ownership of the free video site, its subscription service and the rights to exclusive content for at least two years.

The details of what Google is willing to offer Hulu are not yet available. It is also not known whether or not Google has already made an offer to Hulu.

It is quite possible that Google is looking for access to more content and video scene search technology from Hulu, and the deal would then have to be for a longer period of time. It’s equally possible that Google just doesn’t want anyone else to compete with YouTube’s newly formed movie and TV show streaming business.

An executive of Hulu, involved with the deal-making process has said, “Normally we would have thrown people out if they’d said that.” In spite of such strong statements, Hulu is still talking to Google, so it is quite obvious that the offer being made by Google is probably too good to let go.

While the money involved seems to be big, there is still the possibility that Google and YouTube could eventually swallow Hulu, and that may deter Hulu from agreeing to a deal with Google.

It is also quite possible that Hulu’s parent companies, News Corp and Disney, may decide not to sell the company to anybody at all.

Following the recent release of Lady Gaga’s latest album, ‘Born This Way’, Amazon decided to offer their users a deal that was too good to refuse. They decided to let users download the album from the Amazon MP3 store at a price of just 99 cents. There was such a huge barrage of requests that it ended up nearly crashing their server. Users reported that the album took ages to get downloaded.

Lady Gaga has been promoting the new album prior to its iTunes release through her Twitter feed. Considering the fact that she has over 10 million followers on Twitter, the album was bound to be much in demand.

The album was available for $11.99 for the regular version and $15.99 for the deluxe version on iTunes. Compared to that, the Amazon offer was extremely reasonable and users rushed to make the best of it.

Amazon launched this special offer to popularise their recently launched Cloud Drive / Player service. To make up for the initial server slowdown due to the increased demand, which left users unable to download the full album, Amazon has offered the album at the same price again yesterday, along with 20GB of free Amazon Cloud Drive storage.

This time around, they say they are ready for the onslaught.

Born This Way reached the top of Amazon’s MP3 best selling list soon after the offer and has stayed at the top since then.

The Kindle is already very popular and is set to become even more popular in due course. The new model will cost U.S. $114, which is $25 lower than the price of the standard model at present. It is due to be shipped on the third of May.

Special offers from advertisers will be displayed on the screen of the new version of the Kindle. Among the sponsors will be brands like Visa, Olay and Buick.

Some of the special deals on offer include $10 for a $20 Amazon.com gift card, $10 for $30 worth of products from the Amazon Denim or Swim shops, $16 for 6 audible books (actual price $68).

Amazon has, however, promised that the ads will not distract readers as they will be displayed only at the bottom of the home page or when the device is idling.

A feature called AdMash will allow users to vote for their favourite screen savers. The most popular screen savers will become sponsored screen savers.

This new version of the Kindle is expected to help Amazon to better fight competition from Apple’s iPad and other tablet devices as well as Google’s upcoming e-book retail service.

Amazon has refused to comment on whether or not they will launch a similar version in The U.K.

Warner Bros. is the first studio to go in for this kind of service on a social network. The partnership makes a lot of sense. Users are likely to watch movies on Facebook and ‘Like’ them, thereby immediately letting their friends know about the movie and allowing those friends to watch the movie right there.

The Batman movie, The Dark Knight, will be the first feature film to be rented out on Facebook.

The official Facebook page for the movie shows a tab called, ‘Watch’. When users click on the tab / link, they will be able to view the movie. Users will be able to pay for the rental through their Facebook credits. The cost of the movie has been fixed at 30 Facebook credits or $3.

Viewers will have the facility to watch the movie at their convenience over the next 48 hours. Movies will be viewable in full-screen mode. The viewer will also be able pause and resume the movie at will. If the viewer exits Facebook, returning to the official Batman: The Dark Knight fan page and selecting the Watch tab will resume the movie. Alternatively, users can select The Dark Knight application that appears on the left side of their Facebook profile page to re-open the video player window.

It will also be possible for users to update their status, post comments and interact with Facebook friends while watching the movie.

President of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, Thomas Gewecke says, “Facebook has become a daily destination for hundreds of millions of people. Making our films available through Facebook is a natural extension of our digital distribution efforts. It gives consumers a simple, convenient way to access and enjoy our films through the world’s largest social network.”

Considering the fact that box office collections have gradually been falling, this could be a new source of revenue generation for the studios.

It is also good for the viewers as it gives them the facility to watch a movie at their convenience, within the website that they spend most time on. It could also be very economical for them as more than one person can see the movie at a time.

This service is only being introduced in the U.S. for now, and other titles will be added later.

Watch The Dark Knight on Facebook

Plans to start an ebook retail service have been in the pipeline at Google for a very long time now and it looks as though things are finally ready to roll.

This service will be called Google Editions, and it will allow users to read books on a wide variety of subjects online.

Google’s ebook service will differentiate itself from competitors Amazon and Apple merely on the basis that Google’s service will not require a proprietary device or software. This, of course, does not mean that Google will never consider developing its own ebook hardware.

Google’s plans regarding the release of Google Editions were announced by Chris Palma, Google’s manager for strategic partner development, during a publishing-industry panel held in New York last week.

While users will be able to buy books directly online, through Google’s Book Search service, they will also have the option of buying the books from retailers and independent shops that will be authorised to sell Google Editions through their web sites. The major chunk of the revenue in these cases will, of course, go to the partner. It is not yet certain whether the price of these books will be fixed by Google or by the retailer.

Given the limited popularity of Book Search, Google will have to work hard to publicise this new service. Google may also develop software to enable users to read the books on the iPhone or iPad in future, which will help boost usage numbers, but might lead to some interesting drama between them and Apple.

So far Google has scanned over 12 million books. Rumours claim that Editions will launch with over 4 million titles available for purchase.

Before Google is actually able to launch Google Editions, though, they will have to get the requisite licences from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Reactions from publishers have been largely positive, as more retail outlets and an open format means more books being sold. However, some authors and publishers feel that Google has been infringing on their copyrights ever since the launch of Book Search, and will continue to do so.

The Mobile Search Benchmark is a means of ranking mobile search providers, with regards to five different criteria. They are, discoverability, readiness, availability, response time and consistency for a search operation carried out through a mobile handset.

Only the larger, better-known search providers have been considered for this survey. The selection was based on comScore’s Expanded Search Query Report published in July 2008.

Nine companies were selected for this survey: Yahoo!, Amazon, Ask, Google, AOL, Craigslist, eBay, MySpace and MSN. Facebook was not included in this survey, as their mobile web applications did not meet the technical requirements of this study.

To ensure a uniform playing field for all participants, a predetermined task was set out, with a fixed set of steps to be used while performing the search operation on each participating provider. One had to first navigate to the home page of the mobile web site, type a search query, and then click on ‘search’. The search results page would then be displayed and would show the search result obtained for that specific query, which were then graded.

According to the study, Yahoo! has currently been ranked the best site for mobile search operations. The provider rankings within individual categories were as follows:

Discoverability

Ability of a consumer to discover the location of a company’s mobile site on the Web.

1. Google
   MySpace
   Yahoo!
2. AOL
   eBay
   MSN
3. Amazon
4. Ask
5. Craigslist

Readiness

Ability of the mobile web site to be rendered on popular mobile devices.

1. Ask
   eBay
   Yahoo!
2. Amazon
   AOL
   Craigslist
   Google
   MSN
3. MySpace

Availability

Percentage of successful transactions out of the total number of transaction attempts.

1. Google
2. Amazon
3. Craigslist
4. eBay
5. Yahoo!
6. MySpace
7. AOL
8. Ask
9. MSN

Response Time

Time required to download each page in an entire multi-step transaction.

1. Amazon
2. Google
3. Craigslist
4. Ask
5. Yahoo!
6. AOL
7. MySpace
8. MSN
9. eBay

Consistency

Standard deviation of the response time of completed transactions

1. Amazon
2. Craigslist
3. Google
4. Ask
5. Yahoo!
6. AOL
7. MySpace
8. eBay
9. MSN

Overall Ranking

1. Yahoo!
2. Google
   Amazon
   Ask
3. AOL
   Craigslist
   eBay
4. MySpace
5. MSN

The research also measured performance of mobile sites in other industry verticals. AirTran was found to be the highest ranked mobile airline site and Bank of America was ranked top for mobile banking.

Overall, though, the results indicated that mobile websites are 30% less efficient than traditional Internet sites.

Filters on Google AdWords are equating the word ‘gay’ with obscenity. Because of this, an ad by poplar Gay news magazine, BGay.com containing the term ‘gay’ could not be uploaded as it failed to meet their editorial guidelines.

The advertiser concerned received a message saying “Gay – Unacceptable Content”. Adding insult to injury, a further message goes on to say “We’ve detected that your ad may contain words often associated with pornography. Google policy prohibits the advertisement of pornography unless it involves consenting adults. Related content is not permitted on the website or as ad text or keywords.”

AdWords editorial policies seem to suggest that the word ‘Gay’ relates to non-consensual sex or sex with minors, which is certainly out of line, and their homosexual clients are bound to be extremely upset with this.

A campaign called ‘Amazon.fail’ was launched on Twitter after this incident came to light. Eventually, Amazon issued a statement saying that due to an error in their system, sexual orientation had been classified as adult content and hence the gay titles had been erroneously deleted. They even promised to restore the titles at the earliest.

Google’s pro-gay stance on California’s proposition 8 has shown them to be very politically correct and mindful of equal rights for everyone. While this is an automatic error caused due to the way their keyword suggestion and association algorithms work, they would do well to set the record straight by correcting this immediately, and also resetting their filters, before they are subjected to a PR nightmare similar to what Amazon is currently facing.