According to Apple Insider, Apple has extended their 30-second music samples to play within a browser. Happening only after a month of Apple’s purchase of online music player Lala, it creates an even more likelihood chance of Apple moving to a cloud based iTunes player.

The 30-second sample will play now within the browser, but in order to purchase the song, it still needs to be done through iTunes Music Store. Customers are now allowed to use the music based on computers activated to that account. With a cloud based service, you would be able to log in on any computer through the internet, and play your music of choice.

Lala has recently joined in a partnership with Google which will allow users to play music and samples quickly through Google. They offer one free stream of a song, with unlimited streaming costing 10 cents per song. It cost 79 cents for a download of the song which is then stored on your computer.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple and Google are becoming more competitive than we had suspected. According to their sources, Google was also in serious negotiations with Lala Media for possible acquisition right before Apple won the bid. Meanwhile, we had previously reported that Apple was in serious talks with Admob immediately prior to Google’s acquisition of that company.

The twin pursuit of the start-ups reveal that the two tech titans have further plans to move deeper into each other’s business: Apple wanted to get into advertising, while Google sought a music service.

Only time will tell whether these two companies will become enemies or not

Media Memo reports that multiple sources are saying that Apple paid approximately $80 million in its acquisition of music streaming service, Lala Media last week.

Apple ended up paying around $80 million for the company, according to multiple sources. That’s less than half of what investors valued the company at in 2008, but it’s more than the $35 million the company raised throughout its life. Which means that some investors could get their money back and more.

The report notes that Warner Music Group had invested $20 million into Lala, but wrote down $11 million of that investment back in March. It remains unclear whether it will recoup its full $20 million investment with the sale or the smaller, post-write-down amount.

Lala reportedly possessed about $10 million in cash, meaning that it could have continued operating on its own for a significant period of time, but it appears that it sought a larger partner due to doubts about the company’s ability to operate profitably as a stand-alone entity over the long-term.

It appears the last minute reports of Apple’s interest in streaming music company Lala media were true. Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are reporting that Apple has indeed acquired Lala Media.

Lala is a four year old startup company that offers customers streaming music not unlike the popular Pandora music service.

Lala’s engineers have built a service that music enthusiasts say is very easy to use. Lala scans the hard drives of its users and creates an online music library that matches the user’s collection, making it painless (and free) for people to get their music in the cloud.

Of the acquisition, Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plan.”

Lala Media has recently been used in Google music searches. It is still unknown if this will continue or not.

Google has released its music service into its “OneBox” offerings. When a user searches for a song the “simple design brings up to four songs to the top of search results. Once one is clicked on, the song will play on pop-up players from MySpace or Lala. The search results are also accompanied by album art and links to music sites Pandora, imeem and Rhapsody.”

The idea is to make searching for music easier by allowing users to listen to the song before traveling away from the search result page. This is a clever move by Google as it allows them to retain users longer on their page and also allows them to sell links to music offering services to increase their bottom line.

“After clicking on a song…a music player will pop up… to play it in full at least once, with an option to buy song downloads from Amazon.com Inc. or Apple Inc.’s iTunes.

Users who try to listen to the same song again may get only shorter previews, though the full-length songs along with videos, tour dates, and ticketing and other band information remains available by clicking through to the MySpace or iLike Web sites.”

The service remains US only for now but will most likely be expanded as other partners are brought on board.