Google Buys Mobile Music Startup for $25M, as it Preps Music Service

Google has acquired Canadian mobile music startup Pushlife for a rumored $25 million as it prepares to release its new music service for Android.

Pushlife, founded by former Research In Motion employee Ray Reddy, had technology that let users bring their iTunes libraries to non-Apple phones.

Syncing iTunes to devices was a big part of it, but Pushlife also let mobile carriers to build apps that would combine a user's personal music collection with songs available in the carrier's store.

The idea was that customers are more likely to buy a song if it's directly integrated into the playback experience -- sort of like Apple did with iTunes on the desktop. Only here, the carrier controlled the transaction and the billing, rather than Apple.

Pushlife had deals with Virgin Mobile in Canada and the U.K..

Google could use Pushlife's technology in a lot of ways, but the most obvious would be to make it easier for users to get their songs out of iTunes and onto an Android device. It may also be thinking of using Pushlife to integrate an online store directly into the Android Music app.