Google Music service tied to Honeycomb: Motorola Mobility CEO

Did Motorola Mobility's CEO Sanjay Jha spill the beans on the upcoming Google Music service, which has been long rumored? If you take his slip of the lip at face value, the answer is yes.

Jha intimated as much speaking at Mobile World Congress (MWC), reported The Guardian on Wed. Feb. 16:

Speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Jha said: "If you look at Google Mobile services [via Android] today, there's a video service, there's a music service – that is, there will be a music service." He added that the value of the upgrade to the Android system, known as "Honeycomb", which will power the forthcoming Motorola Xoom tablet is that "it adds video services and music services".

That's not quite as much as sure thing as The Guardian makes it out to be, but it's been long anticipated that Google would roll out a Google Music service to battle head-to-head with Apple's iTunes. It's expected, as well, that the service will be cloud-based (what else could it be if it's a Google service, anyway)?


Just last Friday, Billboard published a list of Google executives that are believed to be involved in the Google Music project. Music executives told Billboard that Google VP Andy Rubin has personally contacted them about the idea of a Google music service that would include an online store and service.

This is all still purely rumor, but tying such an event to the release of a new platform version (Honeycomb) makes sense. It's widely believed that the Motorola Xoom will be the first Honeycomb (Android 3.0) tablet, and that the release is coming soon (although no official date has been given).