Google buys mobile music startup PushLife for $25 million

It's no secret Google wants to challenge Apple's iTunes service with a digital music platform of its own. The company is said to have begun testing the Google Music streaming service internally since last month and just recently a developer version of Android's upcoming Music app was leaked to the public. Now, taking another step in the same direction, Google has reportedly acquired mobile entertainment company PushLife for $25 million

The Canadian firm was founded and led by former RIM corporate development executive Ray Reddy, who jumped ship from the BlackBerry maker to work on its music synching service. Letting users bring their iTunes and Windows Media libraries to non-Apple phones 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 offering one-click purchases.

The idea was to integrate song purchasing into the playback experience -- much like Apple does with iTunes -- only across multiple platforms and leaving carriers to control the transaction and the billing, rather than Apple.

How this will tie-in with Google's music plans for Android remains to be seen. A Google representative did not comment on the terms of the deal but said: "We believe the team has a wealth of experience building cool mobile applications, and we think they'll make a great addition to our mobile team." Hopefully we'll hear more next month at Google I/O.