On Wednesday morning, ReadWriteWeb will be heading down to Mountain View with everyone else to see the latest that Google has to offer. The company is holding an event to provide “an in-depth look at Honeycomb, Android ecosystem news and hands-on demos” and we thought, what’s a super secretive event like this without some semi-unfounded speculation and educated guessing?
So, we dug around on the Internet a bit, took a look at some other technological palm reading and put it together for those of you who just can’t wait until 10 am PST.
A quick look around brings us to two obvious (read: we wish) candidates: the long-awaited, cloud-based Google Music and the Web-based Android Market.
Engadget, Android and Me, and Into Mobile all make the same prediction, positing that a simple unveil of Honeycomb, the tablet-only release of Android, can’t be all that’s in store for us at Google.
Web-Based Android Market Update
Android and Me cites a “regular source who has provided accurate information on Sprint in the past” as the one behind its story that “Google has finally completed its web-based Android Market” that is “said to be ‘on par with that of the Apple Store or even better.'”
So why are people excited about a new Android Market? Take a look for yourself. Put plainly, the current market stinks. It’s a Google site that you can’t even search. It has three categories. Who knows how it’s organized. Suffice to say, any improvement here would be big news for Android users.
Just take a look at the Android Market the company showcased at last year’s Google I/O. Here’s a video of Google’s expected new marketplace:
Google Music
As for Google Music, Business Week reports that Andy Rubin has taken control of any mobile music effort at Google and headed it in the directions it needs to go.
Rubin felt Android needed better music features to compete with the iPhone, so he wrested away that project last year, according to a former executive, and is now working with a former YouTube lawyer, Zahavah Levine, to acquire licenses from the four major music labels. His group has developed a service that will let users upload their music collections to Google’s servers and then synchronize them with any mobile device, according to three people familiar with Google’s plans. The offering could be unveiled as soon as next month. Representatives of the music labels with knowledge of the talks caution that no deals have been signed. As one of them says, however, Google’s music effort has more credibility now that Rubin is running it.
In that same video embedded above, you can also see Google’s Vic Gundotra demonstrate a number of features that would make up much of the Google Music product we’ve all been waiting for – full-streaming of your music library straight to your device from the cloud. So, obviously Google has been on track with these features, but simply hasn’t unveiled them yet. Tomorrow is a good a time as any, right?
What About A Fork?
Then again, at an Android and Honeycomb event, what if Google were to finally announce that it is officially forking the Android OS? As thinkmobile pointed out late last week, a Honeycomb (read: tablet) UI just might not make sense for smartphones. And vice-versa. Originally, Honeycomb was touted as tablet-only, but then some code was found that seemed to prove that it was also intended for smartphones. So will the OS officially split into two different animals? Or will Honeycomb become the one and only Android?
Then Again…
Then again, it could be none of the above. That’s how it goes with predictions, right?
No post like this is complete without calling on all of you to chime in and let us know what you think. So, what do you think? What will Google announce this time around?
