Photo: Google

How about this? A certain Internet search giant is rumoured to be rolling out a Google music download service built into its search engine in 2010 with a dedicated online subscription service to follow. And in related news, Apple is not happy.

A shot at the core of Apple’s business

A huge part of Apple’s business is built around its iTunes framework. The music download service that has since been used as the launch pad for the company’s extremely successful app store has long been Apple’s digital retail space and a way for the company to tie its users to its hardware (the place where Apple really makes its money). Google, like Amazon before it, wants a piece of that pie, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Details on how this Google music download service will work and whether Google has struck any deals with labels are still scant, but what is clear is the WSJ has heard more than just whispers, with the rumoured service still several months away.

The Google and Apple ring-a-rosy continues

Photo: Stock.Xchng

A couple of years ago, Google and Apple were the best of friends, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt sitting on Apple’s board of directors and the two companies operating in their own markets. Things have changed significantly in recent times, with the list of markets the two technology companies compete in increasing rapidly:

Smartphones: Google Android is currently considered the biggest threat to Apple’s iPhone business.

Tablet computers: Apple’s iPad is selling at an impressive click reaching three million units sold in 80 days. It is widely known that Google is preparing a variant of Google Android (and Chrome) for deployment on tablets some time this year, too.

Advertising: iAd is Apple’s mobile advertising platform developed to compete directly with Google and Google’s recent acquisition, AdMob.

Photo: Apple

Mobile TV: Google TV is the biggest project yet in merging online functionalities with traditional television. The admittedly ‘less interesting’ hobby that is AppleTV came before it and rumour has it Apple is cooking up a cloud-based follow up.

And so on and so on and so on.

This Google Music download service is just another addition in what is shaping to be the most fascinating technology rivalry of this generation.

Photo: Apple

So it seems that Apple is stirring up the rumour mill with their latest acquisition of a trademark for the name, ‘iTunes Live’. What Steve Jobs and co intend to do with the trademark is still uncertain, but putting together the puzzle from Apple’s acquisition of La-La iTunes could be in for a major revamp.

Real-time live concerts

So far all the speculation is pointing at Apple either incorporating streaming live concerts into iTunes or increasing the amount of pre-recorded live content which is already available on the music app. iTunes’ taking the live route seems to be more the plausible road for Apple to take and would be better for the public, who could then choose between watching real-time live concerts on either YouTube or what will then be known as ‘iTunes Live’.

More speculation

Photo: Apple

As everything currently stands, all that we know is that the trademark falls under two categories. The first being, ‘Online retail store services in the field of entertainment featuring prerecorded musical, audio and audiovisual content’. And the second category being, ‘Entertainment services, namely, arranging and conducting of concerts and live musical performances’. This still doesn’t give an idea of what’s cooking at Apple, but definitely points in the live concert direction which we mentioned earlier.

Shhh…

Apple has done an incredible job of keeping the filing of this trademark under wraps, with PatentlyApple.com which keeps track of any patents filed for by Apple even missing a step until recently on this one. This may be due to Steve Jobs and the rest of the Apple family wanting to get one up on Spotify before it even launches in the States, but whatever the reason we can’t wait.

When the details of iTunes Live are finally released to the public, it’s definitely going to stir up a lot noise, but for now all we can do is wait and hope for the best.