Yesterday saw an interesting coincidence of stories hit the wires: on the European side of the Atlantic, the BPI announced that it had sent a cease-and-desist notice to Google in regard to links to copyright-infringed music files. Meanwhile, Stateside, the Wall Street Journal reported on (further) rumours that Google was planning to launch a music download store and subscription service to initially run on Android handsets.

A cynic might argue that the music service "leak" was bad news management from Google, aiming to portray itself as a doer of music industry good, not bad. Whether that was intended or not, it raises an important point. Some time or another (and it looks like it’s going to have to be sooner rather than later) Google is going to need to decide whose side it is on. If it's serious about throwing its weight behind becoming a major digital music player, it's going to need to start making concessions to its label partners. And of course it will start seeing more of a business rationale for doing so: How long will it be before ad revenues from keywords alongside P2P links start to look smaller than potential lost Google music revenue? (Remember we’re not talking about cutting the keyword inventory, just ensuring that legitimate links appear in searches for keywords to appear against).