Google might offer a music service

THE LATEST Google rumour over at Techcrunch suggests that the Internet search and advertising leader is in the process of building up a music service to add to its growing roster of non-search applications.

What with its current array of products and services, which range from videos through email, maps, curbside photography, chat, voice, documents and spreadsheets to books, the idea of a music service does not sound so remarkable. Much less so now than when it was first suggested that the firm might buy Napster in 2006.

A call to Google's headquarters yielded the usual "Google does not respond to rumours and speculation" comment, which we have heard so often that it is starting to replace the company's "Don't be evil" mantra as the firm's motto in our minds.

Other rumours and speculations that the firm refused to comment on in the past included scandalous asides that it might buy Youtube and the suggestion that it might have been preparing a mobile OS.

The firm also recently denied that its Google Earth application had found the lost city of Atlantis, but we are tempted to take its word for that.

Speculation so far includes the suggestion that the service would take advantage of the mobile Android platform, something that does make a lot of sense. It could stream like Spotify, download like Itunes, or just exist like Microsoft's service.

Elsewhere we read that it might be called Google Audio, but we don't believe that. Our money is on maybe Gmusic, the George Clinton inspired Gfunk, or even better perhaps, Gtunes. µ