At last year"s Google I/O, Google teased us with a glimpse at a would-be iTunes competitor. Sadly, nothing really materialised later that year like we hoped. Rumours were abound that Google was having trouble making arrangements with record labels, talks broke down and nobody was really sure what would happen to "Google Music".
Meanwhile, Amazon launched their own cloud-based music hosting service without any kind of consent or agreement from record companies and now it seems that Google is about to follow suit.
The Wall Street Journal has a report that Google will announce Google Music later today at Google I/O. To further this, an article at All Things Digital goes into more details on what this service will offer.
Unlike Amazon"s Music Service, it"s unlikely that Google"s will let you purchase music. Instead, Google will let you upload the music you own to stream to your devices, with enough space to hold about 20,000 songs. This eclipses Amazon"s limit of only 2,000 songs.
Google Music will launch as an invite-only beta for selected users before rolling out to everyone, at least in the US. There are no details on pricing either, but there aren"t many Google Services that don"t have a free version. Expect more details to arrive once Google I/O begins later today.