Consumer Confidential: Google gets musical, emergency texts coming, Sony tightens up

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Here’s your tracks-of-my-tears Tuesday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

--Microsoft grabbed a bunch of headlines with its $8.5-billion purchase of Skype. But Google also has a pretty big announcement: The company is set to launch an online music locker service that will allow users to store and access their songs wherever they are. The idea is similar to a service launched by Amazon.com in March. Like the Amazon Cloud Drive player, Google music service is being introduced without any prior licensing deals with major music labels, following months of fruitless negotiations. Google has been working on a music service as a feature of its Android mobile operating system to better compete with Apple’s iTunes. Now it’s up to the major music companies to decide how’ll they’ll fit into these newfangled services.

--Your cellphone may soon be an emergency lifeline. Updating the national emergency alert system, federal officials say some cellphone users in New York and Washington will soon be able to receive alerts by text message in the event of a national or regional emergency. The service in those cities is scheduled to start late this year as a prelude to nationwide service next year, perhaps as early as April. To receive the alerts, users must have mobile phones with a special chip, which is currently included in some higher-end smartphones like the latest iPhones. The service will also require a software upgrade. The emergency text messages will include alerts issued by the president, information about public safety threats and Amber Alerts for missing children.

--Sony expects to get its game network up and running again by the end of the month following a huge hack attack affecting more than 100 million online accounts. Sony also confirmed that personal data from 24.6 million user accounts was stolen in the security breach last month. Personal data, including credit card numbers, might have been stolen from an additional 77 million PlayStation accounts. Sony has not received any reports of illegal uses of stolen information, and the company is continuing its probe into the cyber-attack. Sony shut down its PlayStation network on April 20 after discovering the security breach. The company did not notify consumers of the breach until April 26, even though it began investigating unusual activity on the network April 19.

-- David Lazarus