iTunes rival could be live by Christmas.
Speculation says Google's mobile chief and VP of engineering Andy Rubin is in talks with music labels on plans for a download and cloud service that would allow its mobile users to play songs wherever they are.
The music biz is probably keen, concerned as it is about Apple's omnipotence in music retail. Even Amazon, launched its MP3 store in 2007, still only has just over 12 per cent market share.
iTunes is now approaching 12bn total downloads.
Mind you, Google is hardly going to be a compliant partner. It too likes things its own way.
The mobile dimension is important to the proposed service, with the reported 200,000 Android activations a day.
Rumours of a cloud based Spotify-like service from Google and Apple have been around for a while now. Apple bought cloud-based music company LaLa Media last December then Google bought remote media company Simplify Media, but so far no concrete plans have been announced.
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