Google Acquires Toronto-based Mobile Media Software Startup PushLife

The Internet search giant, Google Inc., has completed its third acquisition of a Toronto-based tech company, this time scooping up PushLife Inc. with the details of the acquisition being kept private.

PushLife was founded in 2008 by ex Research In Motion employee Ray Reddy and aimed to developed software for people to organize, share, and purchase digital content across different mobile platforms from a single application.

PushLife developed software similar to Apple iTunes that allowed users to seamlessly purchase online content (like ringtones, music, video, other media) that could be synced across different mobile platforms, including Apple iOS, Google Android, and BlackBerry devices.

PushLife said key employees at the company would continue to work as part of Google’s broader engineering team at Google’s Canadian headquarters located near Dundas Square in downtown Toronto.

As a result of the acquisition, PushLife said in a statement the company would eventually discontinue its services, but did not disclose a more specific time frame as to when that could happen.

Trends indicate both consumers and enterprises are shifting towards cloud computing given scalability and accessibility advantages over using localized systems.

There has been a rush of new start-ups that aim to take advantage of the trend, like the UK-based music provider Spotify that even allows users to host their purchased media content in the cloud making it accessible on a variety of devices. Apple has yet to announce a cloud-based version of iTunes, but the company is expected to do so as competition from emerging rivals intensifies.

We firstly reported Google was working on an iTunes competitor simply enough dubbed Google Music. Google is expected to integrate key technologies developed at PushLife into Google Music and Android powered devices.

Google Music allows consumers to purchase DRM-free media from the Google Market that seamlessly syncs between a PC and multiple Android devices through the cloud.

See the embedded video for a demonstration of Google Music when the product was demoed in-depth during the annual Google I/O conference in 2010.