Is the new Google music service an iTunes killer?

Google had just released its own music service (iTunes like) to the world.  The service is offered mainly in the U.S. at first, but will spread world-wide later on.

Google offers what they call a “music locker” service along with a limited ability to share music with others (using the Google+ social network of course).

The new music locker service can be described as a virtual storage locker, where you are allowed to store up to 20,000 songs (which you own of course). It’s like an online personal music library or an online version of iTunes with limited functionality.

The sharing option allows you to share some of your music via the Google + social network.

Android users in the U.S. can use the android phone/tablet to upload music to their locker and to tag it and sort it.
For now, Google doesn’t offer a “match” feature (like iTunes has in its newer release).

So, is the new Google Music service an iTunes killer?

At this phase we’ll say – no. Google still doesn’t offer the many options that iTunes offers their users (finding music and matching their taste as an example) nor does it offer the huge amount of online purchasing options for music and sound tracks. Also, as Google Music is currently limited to U.S. based users – it still has a huge gap to close compared to iTunes world-wide spread.

Having a music service that competes with the market leader (iTunes) is definitely a good thing.Competition is good and will drive both products to improve their services, lower their prices and offer more and more features to their users. The bug winners from this move are us – the consumers and we should keep our options open and use them both for our benefit.

Here’s the formal video from Google: