At Google I/O, a series of Google’s conferences that aim to introduce the news about its services, Google launched a new service Google Play Music All Access, which provides for the selection of music on demand, the new interface of the social network Google+ and other improvements to some of its services.
As the name suggests, Google Play Music All Access is part of Google Play. Currently it’savailable in the U.S.A. only at a cost of $7.99 per month to those who subscribe by June 30 and then at $9.99 per month. This service, which is expected to compete with Spotify, can be seen as a search engine for music and at the same time as an Internet radio. You can listen to songs from a list and add songs from your computer to the cloud Google Music service to make them available on all your devices, including portable ones.
Google+ is growing and now only the most obstinate people can consider it a failure. The new interface immediately recalls Pinterest for its structure. One of the main criticisms to the previous interface concerned its use of space and now the new multicolumn stream allows you to use it much better. The number of columns depends on the available space and big photos and videos can take up all the available width. However, you can configure the stream to a single column.
As usual it will take some getting used to such a major change, also because several minor changes have been made to the interface as well. It’s impossible to please everyone and also on Facebook with every change there are some disgruntled users who even launch petitions to go back, obviously with no success.
Personally, the only thing I don’t like very much of the new Google+ interface is the fact that now there’s an icon that warns me of new posts in the stream and I have to click it to show them. I’d rather have at least an option that would allow me to toggle the automatic update in the stream, like it was in the old interface.
The new Google+ interface is connected to the new Hangout, which unifies the various Google services for chat and instant messaging such as Google Talk and Messenger. Now you can have a richer messaging, the history of your chat and other functions. Everything is now available for the various mobile devices as well.
The news are so many and will be analyzed in detail to evaluate them adequately. In general, the reception seems positive but of course there was also criticism. We can expect some changes in the coming weeks but I think Google has done a good job to improve its ecosystem.
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