Google’s new playable music search feature was just a hint at the future of Google’s musical ambitions, if its new concept demonstration video of next year’s Chrome OS netbooks — featuring an embedded Lala music playback app — is any indication.
About 40 seconds into the video to the right, Google’s video depicts a user accessing a Lala playlist through a dropdown applications menu at the upper left, causing a collapsible Lala window with a playlist and playback controls to appear (screengrabs below).
Google’s search engine already includes a pop-up window that plays music from Lala and other services after users search for them. It will likely pursue the same strategy on its netbooks as suggested by this video — not because Google wants to be nice to Lala, but because consumers may hesitate before buying a Google Chrome OS netbook if it means leaving their music collections behind.
“The browser is the new iPod” has been Lala’s mantra this year, making it precisely the type of service Google would want to include on its browser-only, Linux-based device, which is slated for a late 2010 release.
The ad-free Lala service sells streamable songs for 10 cents a piece and allows users to duplicate their computer’s collection into the cloud. This means netbook owners who stay near an internet connection can effectively play their home collections and buy new songs for ten on the dollar, which could make a lot more sense to music fans than the dollar or more they pay for downloadable versions of the songs.
But what if you can’t access the cloud?
Lala told Wired.com last month that its as-yet-unreleased iPhone app will cache the last few hundred songs you’ve played on its memory so you can play them back without being online. If Lala implements the same feature in its Chrome app and Google netbooks have at least as much memory as an iPhone, Chrome OS netbook owners will be able to listen to a decent number of their Lala tunes even without an internet connection.
