Yesterday Google introduced “Google Play” – a digital entertainment destination where you can find, enjoy and share your favorite music, movies, books and apps on the web and on your Android phone or tablet. Google Play is a rebranding of Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore altogether under one umbrella. It is obviously Google’s version of Apple’s iTunes store. Google Play is entirely cloud-based so all your music, movies, books and apps are stored online, always available to you, and you never have to worry about losing them or moving them again.
- Google Play will allow the storage of 20,000 songs not purchased through the service. Which may seem like a disadvantage to Apple’s 25,000 but when you take into consideration that Google isn’t charging you a $25 fee every year? It seems to be a bargain.
- eWeek points out there are now over 450,000 Android apps and games available as against Apple’s App Store which currently has around 550,000 iOS apps.
- Apple App Store’s iOS apps are only for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad while Android apps cater for a proliferation of Android smartphones and tablets.
Jamie Rosenberg, Google’s Director of Digital Content remarks, in a blog post, that in celebrating the launch of Google Play, “Google will be offering a different album, book, video rental and Android app at a special price each day for the next week in our “7 Days to Play” sale. In the U.S., today’s titles include the collection of top 40 hits Now That’s What I Call Music 41, the popular game Where’s My Water, the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the movie Puncture for just 25 cents each. In addition, you’ll find great collections of hip-hop, rock and country albums for $3.99 all week, detective novels from $2.99, some of our editorial team’s favorite movies from 99 cents, and our favorite apps from 49 cents.”