Apparently not satisfied with the pace of its embrace of all things media, Google is rumored to be looking at acquiring Napster. Google reportedly wants to offer a monthly subscription service, which it believes is where the market is headed.

This will be yet another area that Google, Yahoo and AOL will be going head-to-head. Will a Google-owned Napster change the landscape of the download/subscription market? Right now you have Apple/iPod/iTunes on one side (w/75% market share) and everyone else (Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Amazon, and Google (?) not to mention iRiver, Creative Soundlabs, Sony, etc.) on the other. Even though I am a loyal iPod user, it’s hard to bet against the group of people lining up against Apple’s hegemony.

There was a time that the original Apple Mac had a not-so-bad market share but it didn’t license it’s software and ended-up competing against too many others (Microsoft, IBM, Compaq, and scores of others) and ended up getting crushed.

All I can say is that this new wave of web business activity is anything but boring.

technorati: google napster iTunes

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 at 10:13 am by Insider and is filed under Not the conventional wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.