Google Inc. is preparing to unveil today a new online music service similar to a service recently launched by Amazon.com Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, a move that escalates the battle to create the next generation of Internet businesses for storing and listening to music.

Google, like Amazon, hasn’t secured licenses from the four major recorded-music companies, according to these people, and is likely to include a system that functions much like a remote hard drive. Users of the service are expected to be able to listen to songs they have uploaded to the service in a so-called streaming mode but won’t be able to download the files themselves.

It’s funny how Google follows every amazon stop … Amazon Elastic Computing (EC2) -> Google App Engine … Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) -> Google Storage for Developers … Amazon Cloud Drive / Player -> Google Cloud Drive / Player …

With Google’s amazing track record (of zero) of building friendly services and applications, I don’t expect their music locker to really take off … especially again if it’s based on Google Storage for Developers, which is not being used by any developer.

Google, do you want to really get anywhere with this? Buy Orb, scale it, embed it seamlessly into your cloud, and offer up the first cloud based full media center.

If the typical Indian business owner thinks the much talked about smartphone revolution does not concern their business then they should think again. Given the rapid growth of the smartphone market, it is only a matter of time till Indian consumers get their hands on one of the new generation mobile phones. This presents a great opportunity for Indian small businesses that know how to capitalize on this trend to gain competitive advantage.

Although India boasts to have the 2^nd largest telecommunication network in the world after China (with 771 million mobile lines in service) and over time internet usage has surged (currently standing at aprox.  50 million active monthly internet users on PCs and phones), consumers in India have historically avoided mobile internet. The reason was the slow speed of the connections and an overall poor experience on feature phones. This is about to change.

India’s telecom providers are now driving consumers towards a new wave of inexpensive smartphones that will be powered by their new next generation 3G mobile networks, which should be fully rolled by 2012. According to IMRB and IAMAI the total number of mobile internet users in India in 2010 was 12.1 million. In 2011 the number is expected to reach 30 million. A recent study by the Boston Consulting Group has predicted there could be as many as 237 million mobile internet users in India by 2015, up from the current estimate of about 11 million. This not only implies exciting times for telecom companies but also presents a unique opportunity for businesses that are ready to deliver rich mobile content, games, and useful ‘apps’ to consumers and businesses hungry for great experiences on their new smartphones.

Smartphones, for many Indian consumers in cities and rural areas alike, will represent the equivalent of their PC, opening the flood gates to reaching the previously untapped consumers throughout the country with compelling digital experiences. Consumers, who had been previously limited to retail businesses in their local area, will now have full access to online commerce sites. Since historically e-commerce sites have not been formatted for mobile devices, India’s future presents a perfect opportunity for small businesses to serve this new need, while avoiding global players as competition.

In the future, consumers will also have full access to ‘apps’, the latest hot trend in mobile, that will allow for businesses to provide experiences that move well beyond the capability of the mobile browser. Free, for sale or designed to drive awareness of their business, applications will provide businesses with a permanent foothold on consumers’ devices. In a recent report, Gartner forecasts that global sales of apps for the iPad, iPhone and other portable mobile phones and devices will exceed $15 billion in 2011. It also predicts that this year 17.7 billion apps will be downloaded, the revenue from which will exceed the mobile app revenue generated in 2010 by 190%.

 Though digital technologies are yet to conquer the Indian market, the country has already set out on a path to its digital future. Smartphones will bring rich digital experiences to the masses, which they will not only desire but will come to expect – and entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of such platforms will reap the benefits.