(Mashable) -- Apple may get a nasty surprise this holiday season; rumors are swirling that Google's Andy Rubin is planning on a holiday-season launch for the search behemoth's new music download service.
According to a Reuters report, Rubin, the Google VP Engineering who oversees Android development, has been deep in talks with record labels and "hopes to have the service up and running by Christmas".
Google's service would be an iTunes challenger that would be deeply connected to the Android mobile operating system. As we reported over the summer, it seems the company plans to first launch a music download service and progress to an online subscription service by next year.
Ultimately, "Google Music" would be a cloud-based subscription service with the ability to stream directly to Android mobile devices.
An anonymous record label exec confirmed to the newswire that Google was, indeed, in talks with labels about launching such a service and that labels aren't at all upset about the prospect.
CNN
