Google's going to raise the profile of digital music in its search results, offering people ways to discover and buy music through a partnership with Seattle-based iLike and Lala, according to reports out of the Bay Area today.

But Google's "One Box" initiative doesn't sound like a full-blown music destination/distribution service like Microsoft has tried various ways, Amazon's doing with its MP3 store and MySpace is building.

Techcrunch's initial OMG story said Google's building a music service with major record labels on board. Then it added news that iLike and Lala will stream music from the search results and it will all be announced Oct. 28.

Cnet's report suggests its going to be enhanced search results that present not just links but music information and buying opportunities via iLike and Lala, a Palo Alto-based Web music service.

Why hasn't Bing done this sort of thing already? You'd think it could pretty easily tap the Zune service, if Zune's licensing deals would allow it, or surface MSN's rich music features.

Google's service sounds cool but nowhere near a YouTube for music (gTunes?). If it was going there, perhaps it would have bought iLike or some other startup that indexes and infers people's taste in music.

This also sounds like a middle finger extended toward Apple during its messy divorce from Google.