Today, at their Google I/O developer's conference, Google finally announced their Google Music service. The service is designed to let users upload their music collection and have it anywhere they can access a browser or use an Android application. I'm not surprised that the announcement was met with lackluster response since people had been anticipating (read: knowing about this) for months. The question really became how was it going to function.

Or, if you're a Zune user, the question becomes now that Amazon and Google have discussed their cloud music offerings (with Apple apparently waiting in the wings for what they're going to do) where does that leave Zune -- especially considering, as we all know, Zune has some of the best pieces in place to offer a compelling entertainment-anywhere experience.





Zune would have you understand that currently your entertainment *is* everywhere. Yet the part that's missing is access to songs you have in your local collection, that aren't available in the Zune Marketplace. How, for example, can I tell my Windows Phone to let me play an unavailable album by proving to it that I own said album? How can I tell the Smart DJ on XBOX 360 to include songs that I have in my local collection sitting on a PC just a few feet away? If there was a way to set all my music in the cloud (or at the very least a cloud-based list of all of the songs I own) then these services would become that much more viable.

At present, if you own a song that is at least displayed in the Zune Marketplace, then your song gets mapped so that when you went to that song in the Marketplace listing, it would show as (in collection). I wonder how we can take that aspect and get it to transcend other tuners. If the Marketplace can see that song as (in collection) how can we get other tuners to see that same thing?

With the combination of Zune Pass + Skydrive + Purchase History + Collection scanning, everything is in place to start having my collection talk to all of these tuners. If, and when, Zune pulls that trigger it will surely be a day about 'entertainment, everywhere'.

I applied for a beta invite to Google's service and I hope to give it a spin. What do you guys think of Google Music as a formidable competitor to Amazon, Apple and Microsoft?