Thaindian News

Toronto, April 12 (IANS) After offering $900 million last week to buy about 6,000 patents of the fallen Canadian telecom giant Nortel, Google has now snapped up an Indian-owned mobile music company here that develops apps for non-Apple mobile phones to play, organize, share and buy music easily.

Google has acquired Toronto-based PushLife Inc. reportedly for $25 million to enhance music offerings.

PushLife Inc. was started three years ago by its current CEO Ray Reddy who had previously worked in corporate development at the BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM).

The software developed by PushLife enables phones running on BlackBerry or Android operating systems to sync with iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries on a computer. This unique software gives them iPhone-like abilities to organize, share and buy music.

A user plugs their PushLife-enabled phone into their desktop computer, just like they would an iPod. The PushLife desktop plug-in automatically starts and syncs with iTunes and Windows Media Player.

“We are pleased to announce that we’ve been acquired by Google!” the Toronto-based company said on its web site Monday.

PushLife said its acquisition has come at a time when “Google is driving innovation on the mobile web across a wide variety of areas” and “we thought joining the company would be a perfect fit.”

After Monday’s merger, the Indian-owned Canadian company said it would “work on building better mobile applications for all users.”

Welcoming the three-year-old Toronto company on board, Google Canada spokeswoman Wendy Rozeluk said, “We believe that the PushLife team’s deep understanding of immersive applications and user interface design will help us build innovative mobile products.”

Before snapping up the Indian-run software company, Google was reportedly close to launching its own music streaming service compatible with Android.

(Gurmukh Singh can be contacted at gurmukh.s@ians.in)