There’s been a lot of chatter lately regarding tension between Apple and Google, but one front where the Mac maker and the search giant appear to be simpatico is regarding Lala Media.
Lala, you will recall, is the music streaming business that Apple bought for $85 million back on December 6, in the process reportedly snatching it away from another suitor, Google. Tech enthusiasts held their breath waiting to see how that purchase would play out between the media giants, particularly since Google had partnered with Lala only a few months back for a music search deal.
According to BusinessWeek, that worry was for naught. Google director of product management R.J. Pittman explains that the companies have agreed to leave the current deal in place. “We have enjoyed a good relationship with Apple for many years, and that continues to be the case,” Pittman says. “We are agreeing to continue to leave the service as it is.”
Apple, always content with “the less said, the better,” had no comment other than spokesman Steve Dowling confirming the obvious: “We generally do not comment on our purpose or plans” regarding acquisitions.
Although Lala’s Google deal appears to be safe for now, elsewhere a storm continues to brew between Apple and Google on a number of fronts. In addition to the obvious smartphone battle between iPhone OS and Android, browsers (Safari vs. Chrome) and even desktop operating systems (Mac OS X vs. Chrome OS) are in both companies’ scopes. Google has been making great strides in the cloud-based world where Apple clearly intends to come stomping into.
Exactly how Lala fits into Apple’s plans is unclear, but most analysts see Cupertino leveraging its new purchase to make your iTunes library available anywhere there’s an Internet connection, instead of being tied to a hardware device like the iPhone or iPod touch.
A new hardware device from Belkin turns your trusty speaker setup into a Bluetooth receiver.
Even before Boxee goes into it’s beta stage, it will expand its services with the addition of Crunchyroll, an anime supplier, and an entertainment source called Crackle.
Crackle is part of Sony Pictures Entertainment and has a great selection of movies, TV shows and some original content. The combining of the two content sources will give Boxee 49 different TV minishows and 37 original Web shows.
A minishow is episodes of a TV show condensed into a 5 minute show. They have miniepisodes of shows like Diff’rent Strokes, Voltron, Married with Children, and several others. Sony offers some of these condensed shows on Hulu and On-Demand cable offers as well.
Boxee is available for Mac, Windows, and Ubuntu Linux systems as well as Apple TV. Soon the service will be getting it’s own hardware device, prototypes of which will be on display at the Boxee unveiling on December 7.
Because Boxee is considered disruptive technology, there have been a range of reactions from the news of Crackle and Crunchyroll joining it. Some have seen Boxee’s potential, while others like Hulu have fought to try and pull content from the service. The fact that Crackle, backed by a very large media group, is coming to Boxee is powerful news.
