Google Unifies Media, Apps Into Google Play

eldavojohn writes "Google has just announced Google Play to merge their existing solutions for music, movies, books and apps in the new cloud based storage system promising that you will never have to worry about losing or moving them across devices ever again. You'll be able to store 20,000 songs for free. The region breakdown is: 'In the U.S., music, movies, books and Android apps are available in Google Play. In Canada and the U.K., we'll offer movies, books and Android apps; in Australia, books and apps; and in Japan, movies and apps. Everywhere else, Google Play will be the new home for Android apps.'"

Re:Will Apple file a lawsuit?

[imamac]

I don't think it would infringe, but it is certainly Google's "me too" moment of the day.

Re:Will Apple file a lawsuit?

[Anonymous Coward]

What everyone is forgetting, is that iCloud is the same as many other services long before it. Bah, even Ubuntu One was there first.

Re:Will Apple file a lawsuit?

[Anonymous Coward]

or SkyDrive which has been around several years. Or Dropbox. Apple iCloud is a late comer to this,and with the insane limitation that you can only use it for files created by Apple programs, and not share files.

All my stuff in the cloud...

[Picass0]

...until I wake up one day and it's not.

WHY?

[DarthVain]

USA: Music, Movies, Books, Apps
CAN: Movies, Books, Apps
UK: Movies, Books, Apps
Au: Books, Apps
Japan: Movies, Apps

Um, does this not seem odd? Only the US can store Music in Google Cloud? Is this because the RIAA can sue people there? Why the mashup of various media in various places. I wonder does this have more to do with law in the country in question, or the county of origin? Considering the stellar privacy stuff lately, I think I would rather figure out how to host my own server to take my stuff anywhere I like.

Oh and Books? Really? I mean you can fit like what a million on a micro SD card these days. Hell even music, unless you have a 20,000 song library, you can fit more music than you could ever really want on a 16GB smartphone... 32GB even more.

Video is intriguing. I can just imagine what is going to be uploaded there.

The problem with clouds

[kawabago]

is dissipation.

Dumb move.

[__Paul__]

"Google Play" sounds like an environment for children. Why would people look there for serious applications?

Re:I don't want my cloud provider to know type of

[Americano]

If security, confidentiality, and permanent ownership of the stuff stored are such overriding concerns, then it's likely that a cloud service isn't for you, and you should avoid using one.

Re:Will Apple file a lawsuit?

[rhook]

Until recently the iPhone required iTunes in order to sync your contacts/calendar/apps. Android devices have never required a computer in order to sync this stuff.

Re:Will Apple file a lawsuit?

[oakgrove]

It's called business. Apple makes a lot of money and is in a sector ripe for real competition. It's the war of the ecosystems and with MS and Apple playing for keeps you better believe Google is going to step in the mix.

Re:I don't want my cloud provider to know type of

[JohnFen]

Then don't use cloud-based services. That's the route I take -- I just don't use them. I do use an Android phone and apparently will be using the cloud for apps, but that's all.

If you want cloud services, then use encryption -- but understand, if you're truly concerned, that encryption will not guarantee that your stuff stays private. All public key encryption is breakable without difficulty to someone who has access to a large sampling of your encrypted data and lots of CPU cycles to throw at the problem. Such as cloud providers do.