Finally, Google has also jumped into the music-bandwagon! Google India today launched Google Music India – a fully-blown music streaming service.

The Google Music home page with album listings.

The service, which was launched earlier today under ‘Google India Labs’, is available at http://www.google.co.in/music and is accessible by users all across the world.

Google Music is pretty-impressive – especially the search part. Existing streaming services like Raaga and MusicIndiaOnline have appalling search – and that’s where Google‘s service scores. The search feature is quite comprehensive. You can search with the movie name, the lead actor’s name (e.g. a search for ‘Shah Rukh Khan’ lists songs from his movies), songs according to time period, and what not. You can even use complex queries to find out Guru Dutt track from your childhood that you’ve so badly wanted to catch up with, using some smart search queries.

Fresh from watching the movie, I badly wanted to listen to the songs. Lo and behold, Google comes to my rescue.

The service does not use a native ‘Google‘ player, neither does it host tracks in its server. The songs are sourced from ‘Saavn.com’, ‘Saregama’ and ‘in.com’, says the Google India Blog. Users can choose the player of their choice, for some songs.. The audio quality is decent. ‘Saregama’ and ‘in.com’ players do a good job, while the ‘Saavn’ player quite buggy. The streaming works well in a 2 Mbps+ connection, but the songs stutter in 256Kbps. Another drawback is that the service does not offer playlists.

Currently, Google Music has a comprehensive collection of Bollywood. Tamil, Malayalam, and other regional tracks are yet to make it.

The service is fully legal – since it offers just streaming and not downloading. It is a successor to Google‘s music search service in the US – which offered search and previews of tracks.

Google has also launched its new music service in China.

The extent of Google Music’s success is doubtful since India has a strong ‘downloading culture’. Users prefer downloading songs rather than listening to audio streams online – they would still opt for pirated tracks available for download.  Another major con would be the slow internet connections in the country – the service needs at least 256Kbps (or above) for smooth playback. Besides, a bulk of India’s internet users use internet plans with data-transfer caps – such users would give this service a miss, in all probability. Then again, Google will have to tackle many established players like Raaga.com and MusicIndiaOnline.

However, the service is a boon for all music addicts. Foraging for that long-lost-track, can now be done in just a click. Enjoy!

Finally, I get my retribution. Microsoft is banned from selling MS Word and/or any applications that can open DOCX/DOCM/XML files in the USA!! Whee!! The ruling that made Bill Gates Steve Balmer pee in his pants came from a judge in Texas – a landmark for GNU/Linux, I might add.

i4i Inc – a company operating from Toronto, is the root cause behind M$’s latest fitfall. The firm succeeded in winning an injunction against M$, concerning gross violations of its XML patents. To quote from the ruling, the judgement  “prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML”. The incident is reminiscent of the old IE frazzle has kicked Microsoft out cold! The breather for this monopolistic giant is the mere 60 day time window to implement the injunction.

So, does this mean M$ is goanna be the next dead duck?

Not really.

M$ has the money and muscle power, not to mention access to all the movers and shakers. The doyens of the company are taking the news in the stride and have decided to fight back against the small-time company i4i with all might. It’s going to be tough time for i4i, which  might, in all probability, go the Netscape way – to dysfunction, considering the might of the corporate conglomerate pitted against it. However, it must be said that i4i has some brave dudes out there who’ve achieved great success against M$ – a victory none else has been able to secure. If things go the way they are actually supposed to be (provided i4i gets a super-awesome lawyer and/or protection from M$’s corporate espionage  – if any), we might see the first days of M$ doom. I’m goanna celebrate that with crackers!

Image Courtesy: XKCD

All this brings out the main reason why I all of us GNU/Linux enthusiasts hate M$ Windows – Their highly monopolistic, derogatory and user-hampering principles!! It’s a fact that M$ pays the highest paychecks to its employees and harbours the world’s most brilliant Computer Scientists/Engineers. Yet, just see the countless bugs in Windows Vista!! If a group of ‘hackers’ could collaborate and create a very user friendly operating system that has all the goodies of Vista and consumes a tenth as much memory (Kubuntu 9.04), why can’t M$ do the same? The glaring answer is there in the question itself! The bugs are deliberate. Had M$ been as stable an O/S as GNU/Linux, a major chunk of the antivirus/’protection’ software companies would go bankrupt! Unless M$ finds a solution to the countless bugs in its software and do some serious rethinking about its policies, it’s a downward lane for the company. The indicators have already started pointing to that fact.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m content with my OpenOffice 3.0 and Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope!