Google had been dropping hints about its impending music streaming service since last year. Though, we did not get to see anything
concrete happening, now it seems like Google is moving ahead and has started initial testing of the service. Apparently, Google employees are already using the service in their office premises.
The company might be looking for a May release of the service during its I/O meet. But there is one tiny little bump in the road, the service has yet to score any content. Yes, you read it right, Google is still in the process of negotiating the deal with record labels and this is where the things start to look a bit iffy. Google is planning to set up an online repository of music, from where you would be able to stream your music anytime, anywhere. Google may be kosher with this, but the record labels are skeptical about unleashing their music in this way.
Google faced the same problem while launching its Google TV service. We hope, it learned some lessons from that fiasco. Google TV has yet to get bigger network operators on board. Or probably, Google may try to do with music what it did with books. For its ambitious Google Books venture, the company simply decided to go ahead and start digitizing books without seeking any permission from their copyright holders. However, the self-righteous, 'do not evil' company did provide 'opt-out' feature for the rightful owners. All they had to do was to keep their eyes peeled out to see if Google digitizes their content and then they could inform the behemoth about their unwillingness. Thankfully, a US Court turned down the royalty package offered by the company and has asked it to not to go ahead with the plan. Keep watching this space for new developments.