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Google launches Play service combining music, movies, books and apps

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Android boss Andy Rubin tightened his grip on Google’s growing entertainment empire yesterday with the launch of Google Play.

The new service combines music, movies, books and apps into a single destination and does away with Google’s separate stores — the Android Market, Google Music and Google eBookstore.

Google Play can be accessed across Android-powered phones and devices and on the Internet at http://www.play.google.com.

The sleekly designed site, which competes with Apple’s iTunes and App store, offers customers an easy way to locate content under tabs such as My Books, My Movies and My Android Apps.

Previously customers would have had to go to different destinations to load books and movies or buy apps.

The site also carries special offers of the week, top-selling charts and editor recommendations.

Google says customers will also be able to pick up content across devices since it will be streamed from the “cloud.”

Google hopes the new store will push more customers towards Rubin’s baby, Google Music. In addition to the Google Play announcement, the search giant said that Google Music has hit 4 million subscribers.

Google Music appeared to get off to a slow start, setting the stage for a rivalry between Rubin’s camp, which launched the service, and Salar Kamangar, who oversees YouTube and negotiates with record companies separately for music videos, sources said.

At one point, sources said, YouTube executives had angled to take the lead in the Google Music negotiations with the record companies.

A Google spokeswoman played down any rivalry, saying: “In a company like Google, there are multiple touch points with partners, and our approach varies. This means that sometimes we act independently and sometimes jointly, but in all cases we coordinate between product teams.”