Google's Andy Rubin says iTunes is "not the right experience"

Yesterday's announcement of Google Books was another sign that the internet powerhouse intends to compete with Apple on all levels. If a comment that was made yesterday at D:DiveIntoMobile by Andy Rubin, Google's Vice President of Engineering, is any indication, Google has plans to create an online music store to compete with iTunes.

D:DiveIntoMobile is a conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal's AllThingsDigital, and it features panels with a number of mobile computing notables and the AllThingsDigital staff. During his talk yesterday, Rubin quickly demoed Honeycomb, the tablet version of the Android OS that is designed to compete directly against the iPad. At the prompting of a moderator, he discussed Google's plans in the music space.

When asked if Google would start off with some "simple" download store like iTunes instead of a planned cloud-based subscription service, Rubin reportedly said that "We could build that 10 times over... (it's) not the right experience." Rubin said that he wants the Google music service to have an "intimate connection," reminiscing that he still remembers album titles that he and a date were looking at in a record store when he was 15 years old.

What do you think, TUAW readers? Does Apple need to change the model and the experience for iTunes in order to compete with whatever will eventually come from Google? Leave your comments below.