Since acquiring the Android operating system, Google has been making steady progress in digital entertainment. The new Google Play is bringing it all together.
Introducing Google Play
Google Books has been around for a long time (circa 2004). With Android came the Android Market, and soon after, Google started hawking music and movies as well. Google Play unifies these various products into one place, accessible from your computer or any Android device.
As a “cloud” service, Google Play keeps track of your digital product consumption across any device. If you start reading a book on your HTC EVO, you will pick up wherever you left off when you access it from your computer’s web browser. If you start a movie on your computer, your tablet will automatically jump to that point in the movie as well.
Is Google Just Playing Catch-Up?
In short, Google Play is a good move by Google, and a necessary response to the Apple iCloud and Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Cloud Player. It would have been much more ground-breaking if they were the first to enter this space, but it seems that in many ways they are playing catch-up with the big players already in the market.
In fact, Google seems to have been playing catch-up with many of their recent services. Google+ is like a mashup of Facebook and Twitter. Android is Google’s attempt to get some market share from Apple’s iOS. And even from its beginnings as a search engine startup, Google has been entering the space that others have created.
The power of Google, though, is its ability to improve and innovate what already is… and turn it into something almost unimaginably better.
The Challenge of Multiple Cloud Services
The present status of this new cloud-based world is still a challenge for consumers. Products purchased from Google are available in Google Play, but what about all the stuff you’ve bought from Amazon? What about your iTunes? Apart from the very few “purists” who are completely dedicated to only one provider (think: Apple fanboys), the existence of multiple digital merchants remains complicated and inefficient.
How have you managed in this new cloud-based world? Please leave a comment below.
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