Goopster or Napstoogle?

The latest Google rumour seems to be well in line with what I call the "BASF effect". Remember those BASF commercials that proclaim "we don't make products, we make products better", well that's how I think about Google. Sure they home brewed their search and its still their signature offering, but really it was just a better version of search. Pretty much everything else they have done well have been an acquisition of a good product that they added their Google know-how to and made better.

Anyway the rumour that Google might be buying Napster falls right in the line. As I have previously mentioned Napster seems to be leading the pack in providing a well priced music subscription product except... their software is pretty darned buggy and their way of sharing music within a household (which they allow) pretty much blows, that is - it doesn't work. They also seem to have some real problems with their servers - I'm forever experiencing glitches and significant hangs apparenty due to network issues.

So if anyone can tidy up the Napster UI, take out the bugs, make their servers work and persuade more of those luddite music companies (if nothing else with pots of money) to put their titles on Napster, well that someone would be Google. If it improves as much as Google Earth, Blogger and Picasa have I'll be a very happy man within a few months. The question is, since Napster is centered around Windows DRM, what would Google do to support all its die-hard Mac and Linux users?