I just read this article over at Slashdot:

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/10/21/239247/Google-To-Take-On-ITunes

Now there are a host of people commenting on audio players and different things, but it’s not Google’s thing, they advertise, most new technologies have some sort of advertising / searching (Which leads to advertising) element to it. Android – You end up using Google products, Maps, Gmail etc all leading to advertising. Google Chrome – Your using their browser, navigation bar meaning Google searches, which leads to advertising.

Now look at Spotify – you get something free (music) and in return they get to give you advertising. That sounds like Google’s kind of business. So Google audio, do i reckon it’s an attack at iTunes? Maybe, but I would have a guess that they are aiming more towards Spotify’s market and if Google can offer something that Spotify can’t (i.e. the features that you get with a Spotify premium account) then they might be able to pull it off and no doubt hurt iTunes business in process.

Anyway my 2 cents worth