Google has acquired Canadian mobile application developer PushLife.
The battle for convenience in smartphone music management is just beginning
The acquisition will give Google content synchronisation know-how and technology, and a company that is already familiar with its Android smartphone operating system. PushLife's software automatically synchronises content on a phone with that stored on a computer in iTunes or Windows Media Player, according to a FAQ posted on PushLife's website. PushLife released versions of its software for BlackBerry and Android phones in January, and said the platform was also compatible with phones running Nokia's Symbian operating system.
The companies didn't disclose financial details of the deal. PushLife, founded in 2008, said its staff will join Google's engineering team in Canada. It will discontinue its own synchronisation service, it said.
PushLife said there is a lot more to do in the mobile space, including "improving the way applications look and making them easier to use".
Google is keeping mum on how it plans to take advantage of the PushLife acquisition. However, the search giant may soon have plenty of content for phone and PC users to sync, as according to numerous reports it is close to launching its own music sales service.
Amazon, too, has its sights set on making music available everywhere, but by streaming rather than synchronisation: In March it announced the Cloud Drive storage service and the Cloud Player, which allows users to stream music stored on Cloud Drive and play it on Macs, PCs and Android smartphones and tablets.
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