Me, too! Me, too!

Amazon.com is preparing to take on Apple Computer in digital music by introducing its own portable music player that would be linked to an online music service.

Upon seeing the headline, I just had to click through to the story, because "Amazon Will Take On iPod" seemed like a really stupid idea to me. It turns out the lead-in is borderline misreporting, because they're really taking on Creative Labs and the other manufacturers of the Microsoft-based players, and they're going to compete with Rhapsody and Napster, not iTunes Music Store.

Amazon really does have an opportunity here, and the collaborative filtering technology behind their recommendation agent would be nice to have integrated with a music player, not to mention the extensive music reviews, both of the professional and customer-submitted varieties.

I like having Rhapsody To Go, but quality really drops through the floor at the point in the product chain where Real's responsibilities end and Microsoft's begin.

Amazon has said it hopes to introduce the service by summer.

I have a hard time believing that timeline, unless they're already (secretly) pretty far along in their development of the player. If Amazon's hardware partner is going to rebuild Microsoft's DRM infrastructure from scratch, and do it well, it's going to take more time than they've allocated. If they push the schedule to get the product to market, it's unlikely to be successful.

Regardless, this is a positive development, because even if it ultimately fails as a product and service, it is likely to spur Microsoft to improve theirs. History seems to show that serious competitive threats are the best way to motivate Microsoft.