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Alibaba Says Google Threatened Acer With Banishment From Android

Posted by timothy on from the they'd-have-to-use-windows-phone dept.

Spy Handler writes "In a Microsoft-esque move, Google threatened Acer with banishment from Android if it went ahead with its new cellphone project with Alibaba (China's version of Amazon), using an OS called Aliyun. Acer has remained silent on the issue, but Alibaba reports that they received notification from Google, stating 'if the new product launch with Aliyun went ahead, Google would terminate Android product cooperation and related technical authorization with Acer.' A possible reason for Google's upset is that the Aliyun OS, which is not Android, can run Android apps as well as its own."

5 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. Restraint of Trade by Brett+Buck · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IANAL, but I think this represents restraint of trade. So not only is it (arguably) evil (TM) it likely also illegal.

          Brett

  2. Re:Google is evil by marsu_k · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not usually so keen to call upon these - but a user with only two posts, with a seemingly Linux-friendly nick, not a subscriber apparently but still manages two posts within a minute of the story being released, another one of those recommending Bing of all things... Just doesn't seem quite genuine to me. Not that I disagree with this being dickish, if true.

  3. Re:Microsoftesque? by gl4ss · · Score: 5, Interesting

    it would mean shipping it with no play store, with no google music and so forth...

    (android isn't exactly free if you want to be "authorized", which means shipping with googles apps and googles api's, and yes there's a subset of the android api's that is for google approved devices only)

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    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  4. Re:Google is evil by evandrofisico · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Truth is, as most of the code on android is apache licenced or GPL (as the kernel) there is no need to ask google's permission to make anything with it. The only parts of the operating system that are under a non-permissive licence that can be considered a showstoper would be the "brand" apps, as gmail, youtube and the google play store.

  5. Re:Google is evil by Applekid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This just establishes the fact that Google is not necessarily evil.

    FTFY

    Aliyun (alien?) is clearly written in code lifted from Android without Google's permission. While Android sources are available, that doesn't mean you can just take the source, change it as you see fit and sell it as your own. Pretty shoddy of Acer.

    What I don't understand is how Aliyun can even sell it. Not the mechanism by which they get money in exchange for some code, but how anyone would willingly pay these people for something they can get for free. What exactly is Aliyun adding to the Android base that isn't already there?

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    More Twoson than Cupertino