Another alternative to Apple’s iCloud popped up this week, with Google has announcing that it will be combining the Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore into a new cloud-based service called Google Play, allowing users to access all of their media across all of their Android devices.

Notice how it only works if you have an Android device.

What Google is also doing is killing the ‘Android Market’ brand entirely, because that wasn’t working out so great; Android device owners will soon see the Market app replaced by a Google Play app, as well as Play versions of Android’s existing Movies, Books and Music apps.

What is pretty neat is that the Play feature saves your progress in movies, games and books, so you can pick up where you left off when you switch to a different device. I mean chiefly it’s a minor convenience for the lazy or forgetful, but by now ‘the lazy or forgetful’ constitutes pretty much everybody.

The Google Play store has already launched, and the app will roll out “in the coming days.”

Now we just need to figure out how they’re going to try and force this to have something to do with Google Plus.

[Source: TheVerge]