Google Inc. launched a new vertical search service for music. Google Music allows users to search for musical artists, bands, songs, song lyrics, CD titles, titles, with the results will appearing accompanied by icons of music notes Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google indicated that any items that can be purchased online will have links for ordering or downloading.
Google has partnered with Apple Computer’s iTunes service, RealNetworks Rhapsody, eMusic and Amazon.com at launch. Mayer indicated that Google was not interested in develop a service which would compete with online music services:
“We aren’t building out a music store, we are getting people to the iTunes store. This has been one of the longstanding unfilled user needs, we saw a search need where we weren’t providing users with the highest-quality results that we could.”
While iTunes affiliates earn up to 5% commission on Google has currently has no financial relationship with Apple according to Search Engine Watch:
Google has no financial relationship with the sellers of music. Placement in search results is determined by a combination of the retailer’s page rank and other relevance factors, as well as an element of “randomness” to ensure “fairness,” according to Mayer.
An interesting development which points to the increasing focus on localized and vertical search. Taken together with Amazon.com’s announcement yesterday, it points to the likelihood that much more highly focused search engines or services will be developed and marketed in the future.
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