Google Launches Music Search Service

This week Google extended its services with a musical one that offers free streams and downloadable MP3s but probably to see in it a challenger to Apple's online music market would be too soon.

The idea of the service which uses Google’s Onebox search feature (which presents the user with contextual information for his searches), is to enter a music-related term such as a track title, artist, album name, or even some song lyrics and it will display results with a song clip if one is available.

For now, at least, Google's Music Onebox will only be available to U.S users. For content the service has reached deals with Lala and iLike, (the MySpace-owned music service). Music Onebox will also rely on Gracenote to help identify songs using searches related to lyrics in the song.

Google’s Internet rival ,Yahoo offers a similar service that lets you play full songs and sample clips within your search results with its music being provided entirely by Rhapsody. While Google’s Music Onebox uses a pop-up, Yahoo’s music service is based on a player constant within your search results window.

Music Onebox is designed to also enable music discovery by linking to sites like Pandora, imeem or Rhapsody.